A Bout three years ago, I sent a paper on “The Date of the Bhāga-vata Purāṇa” to the I.H.Q. The publication of the paper was delayed, and it was forestalled by B. N. Krishnamurti Sarma's paper on the same subject, which appeared in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. xiv, pts. iii-iv. The object of both the papers was the same, viz. to controvert the views of Vaidya and Winternitz who proposed the tenth century A.D. as the date of the Bh.P. Sarma suggests that this Purana was composed in the fifth century, if not earlier. My own view is that the work came into being some time between A.D. 550 and 650. The mention therein of the Huns (ii, 7, 26) and of the Tamil Saints (xi, 5, 38–40) would go against Sarma's hypothesis. Sarma and the present writer adopted somewhat different lines of attack upon the position taken up by Vaidya and Winternitz. It is unnecessary, however, to state the additional matter my paper contained, or to publish it. This will be done if the other view finds a defender who has to be refuted.

The story of Dholā and Mārū is told in a stirring RājputānĪ ballad published in the Bālābakhsh Rājpāt Cāran Pustakmālā, series. It is reviewed on another page of this Bulletin.

The story of the poem is briefly this. Pingal, the king of Pūgal, had a daughter called MāravanĪ Nal, the king of Narvar, had a son named Dholā. During a famine Pingal sought temporary refuge in Narvar, where the two rajas betrothed their children to each other. Some years after this Nal, reflecting that Pingal lived far away, and that the journey to his country was perilous, married his son to Mālavani, daughter of the Raja of Mālvā.

The “North-Western Prakrit” as Konow has called it is represented by the following documents.

(1) The two versions of Aśoka's edicts preserved at Mansehra’ and Shahbazgarhi. At this stage many of the characteristic features of the language have not yet developed, e.g. śr > ṣ, śv > śp.

(2) The later Kharoṣṭhi inscriptions, mostly short, collected by Konow in the second volume of the Corp. Inscr. Ind.

(3) The Kharoṣṭhi manuscript of the Dhammapada discovered near Khotan (Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins).

(4) The Kharoṣṭhi documents from Niya, representing the administrative language of the Shan-Shan kingdom in the third century A.D. In the Journ. As., 1912, pp. 337 ff., J. Bloch examined the dialectical peculiarities of the Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins and showed that they appeared in modern times in the languages of the North-West.

Rāmnārāyan's Kulīn Kulsarbasva (1854) is often regarded as the first Bengali drama, but there are many other Bengali plays of one sort or another anterior to it in date.

Although Herasim Lebedeff, a Russian adventurer, staged two Bengali plays in Calcutta towards the end of the eighteenth century, these have not come down to us. It is doubtful if Lebedeff's plays, which were translations of English dramatic works, were ever published. No clue to the subsequent fate of these plays is found in the autobiographical introduction to Lebedeff's Grammar of Pure and Mixed East Indian Languages, printed in London in 1801

It is proposed here to offer some considerations on the representationof certain Malayalam 1 sounds. It is not the purpose of these notes to present a detailed laboratory account of the acoustic and physiological phenomena to be symbolized, but while characterizing these phenomena sufficiently for the reader to appreciate their general nature, rather to consider certain specific phonetic circumstances of their occurrence and the significance of these in the elaboration of anotational system.

The task of publishing the Khotanese Saka texts of the India Office and the British Museum, on which I am engaged, is likely to be long protracted. It therefore seems advisable to make known as soon as possible a list of the words for which parallel texts guarantee the meanings in Tibetan, Chinese, or Sanskrit. Most of the following words are from the Siddhasāra-śāstra of Ravigupta, of which there are extant sixty-five folios. The Tibetan is to be found in the Tanjur. Two short passages of the Sanskrit are preserved in a compilation in a Madras MS., of which a copy (made in 1902) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Through the courtesy of the Librarian I have been ableto make use of this.

In January of 1936 Dr. Ernest Mackay, director of the excavation of the American School of Indic and Iranian Studies at Chanhudaro, courteously arranged that I should have the use of a Brāhūī speaker and an interpreter for a number of sessions. The Brāhuāī, Dad Muhammad by name, belongs to the Nīchārī tribe of the Jhalawān division of the Brāhūīs. Some confirmatory note s were made as well with the aid of another of the Brāhūī speakers working at the excavation, of the same tribe and village as Dad Muhammad. The note s made were chiefly phonetic.

Unter den osttūrkischen Mss. in der Martin-Hartmann-Sammlung der Berliner Staatsbibliothek gibt es ein in Versen (mutaqarib) verfasstes Werk namens Ǧihān-Nāme (Ms. Oz. Oct. 1704), das in dem Verzeichnis Hartmanns (MSOS, vii, 1904, Bd. ii, S. 10, N. 83) nur als “Erzählung über Firuz-Šah” bezeichnet ist. Als ich 1924 diese Sammlung nach dem Vorschlag von Prof. Weil katalogisiert habe, stellte ich fest, dass es sich hier um ein unbekanntes Werk von Haydar-Mirza Dughlat handelt. Die Hs. besteht aus 125 Seiten im 16° und die Abschrift ist von einem gewissen Molla ‘Umar ibn Molla Hāǧi am 16. Ǧumamacr;di, 1229h. (5. Juni, 1814) vollendet worden.

Owing to the voluminousness of the great Arabic works on general history, from the fourth century A.H. onwards many abridgments were made from them by both the authors of the large works themselves and later hands. These concise works contain a brief survey of the history of Islām as is seen in the Kitāb duwal al-islām of adh-Dhahabī or an enumeration oxf the illustrious persons of a longer period as is seen in the Tabaqāt al-huffāz of the same author.

Literature: Weber, Omina und Portenta (1858), p. 363; Naxatra, ii (1861), pp. 272, n., 393; Ind. Studien, v, 257, x,65; Haug, Sitzber. Bayer. Akad. Wiss., 1875, ii, 506; Zimmer, Ai. Leben, p. 353; Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii, 187; Bloomfield, J AOS., xiii, p. cxxxiv sqq.; AJPh., vii, 484 sqq.; Atharva Veda, p. 81;SBE., xlii, 532 sqq.; Whitney-Lauman, Atharva-Veda, pp. 377 sq.;Henry, La Magie dans I'lnde antique, pp. 68 sqq.; Oldenberg, RV Noten, i, 160; Caland, Ai. Zauberritual, pp. 16, n. 13; 175, n. 8;Papesso, Inni dell' Atharva-Veda, p. 127, n.

Mīrzā Mahdī the biographer of Nādir Shāh, gives but little information on the subject of the Iranian campaigns in 'Omān during the period 1737 to 1744, probably because 'Omān was, relatively speaking, merely a secondary theatre of war and because Nādir did not go there in person. Fasa'I, in his Fārsnāma-yi-Nāsirī, also devotes but little space to the subject, notwithstanding the fact that Muhammad Taqī Khān Shīrāzī, the Beglarbegi of Fārs, played a prominent part in the campaigns.

It is now generally admitted that a great deal of the ancient and medieval myth and legend enshrined in the Sanskrit epics and Purānas is of non-Aryan origin, and that even in Vedic mythology certain pre-Aryan elements are present. Puranic myths of the godsand legends of kings, heroes, and sages, in the form in which we find them in the Sanskrit works, represent undoubtedly a considerable amount of modification from their original forms, whether Aryan or non-Aryan: witness, e.g., the treatment of what would appear to bea genuine Aryan (? Indo-European) saga-that of Purūravas and Urvaśī, as we find it in the Rigveda and the Śatapatha Brāhmana, in the Visnu Purāna and in the subsequent Puranas.

Translations and Adaptations.—As has been stated in the preceding article, most of the plays produced in Egypt from 1875 to 1914 were translations or adaptations of European originals. Shakespeare was amongst the first to be utilized, and a version of Othello, with the title was played by al Qurdāhī. It is difficult to form a clear idea of what these early performances were like; but it is obvious that the very amateurish production, the frequent oriental songs and the changes to suit local taste must have resulted in something very different from the productions of Shakespeare that are current in England to-day.

In the late Åge Meyer Benedictsen's note-books from his visit to Persia and Kurdistan in the year 1901, which are now in my possession, due to the kindness of Mrs. Meyer Benedictsen, I find some unpublished Awromānī texts dictated to Meyer Benedictsen by [Abdu'l-Ghafúr, native of Awromān,1 viz. an unfinished tale, not accompanied by a translation, and the so-called “ BacmeisterscheSprachproben ”.

Chinese scholars have lately devoted considerable attention to the history of Logic in their country, more especially to the history of its Buddhist branch.

Hsüen-tsang's school, which was translating and commenting on the Buddhist Canon, drew its attention to the logical literature, issuing a whole series of valuable translations and commentaries. It is to that school, so far as we know, that belongs the first attempt of the Chinese to understand the history of Indian logic. Chinese tradition considersDignāga's system, partly completed by his disciple Śankaraswāmi, to be the final stage in the development of Indian logic. Chinese authors knew nothing of its further development. Logic before Dignaga, according to the Chinese conception of it, was divided into two periods: the first—non-Buddhist period—connected with the name of Akṣapāda, and the second—Buddhist one-connected with that of Vasubandhu.

The establishment of the theatre in Egypt, like many other Western innovations, was aided by the initiative of the KhediveIsmail. The Suez Canal was completed in the year 1869; to celebrate its opening the Khedive decided to form the Ezbekia Gardens and to build the Opera House which still exists beside them. This building, in. whose fabric wood occupies a dangerously large part, was erected in a great hurry and inaugurated in November, 1869. The opera Aida which Verdi was composing for the occasion in return for a fee of 150, 000 francs, on a libretto originally arranged by Mariette Pasha, was not completed in time for the opening, and a performance of Rigoletto was given instead.

Although it is generally admitted that European and extra European grammatical categories do not absolutely coincide, one very rarely sees the grammar of a native language worked out on the clear recognition of this fact. The following paper is intended to illustrate the differences in grammatical thought between English and one language of the New Hebrides. It is not intended to be a full study of that language, but only to indicate what seems to be the mental outlook of the people who speak it. The language in question is that of Achin, one of a group of small islands off the north-eastern coast of Malekula in the northern New Hebrides. The material which has formed the basis of this study I owe to the kindness of Pastor A. G. Stewart, of the Seventh Day Adventist Mission.

It is now a matter of common experience that it is often found impossible to describe and classify linguistic material within the framework of the classical categories of morphology. The most reasonable alternative and one which has the merit of being objective and practical is the strictly formal and positional technique which has for many years been advocated by J. R. Firth, Senior Lecturer in Phonetics and Linguistics, University College, London. He states that in grammatical studies “ mental structures must be abandoned and research directed towards finding purely formal and positional characteristics of the facts themselves which, being differentiæ, will serve as a means of description, and as criteria for a congruent classification ”. “ And secondly,” he continues, “ beyond this technique of formal description, function or meaning can then be studied in context on sociological lines, unobscured by categories serving any other purpose.”

M.A. Meillet (MSL. Paris, t. ix, pp. 365–372) enseignait,—depuisil est revenu souvent sur la question et s'est toujours prononcé dans le même sens — que, È l'accusatif singulier des thÈmes en -o- du genre animé (masculin, féminin) et au nominatif-accusatif singulierdes thÈmes en -o- du genre inanimé (neutre), la nasale finale était enindo-européen, non pas -m comme on l'écrit généralement, mais bien -n(de même pour les thÈmes consonantiques masc.–fém.: arm. otn “pied”, comme tasn “dix” et les thÈmes en -i- et en -u-).

Die folgende Untersuchung ist aus der Arbeit an Band ii, 2, von J. Wackernagels Altindischer Grammatik hervorgewachsen, der die nominale Ableitung behandelt. Das Material ist gewonnen aus dem Konträrindex in Grassmanns Wörterbuch zum Rigveda, aus Whitneys,, Index verborum zum AV.