On page 93 of his Grammar Taylor divides prepositions, or more strictly speaking, postpositions, into five classes, and speaks of ne prepositions as those which govern the preceding noun or pronoun in the locatival genitive, masculine or neuter. In paragraph 97 a list of 141 prepositions is given. Of the 27, which take the ne construction, 15 may be explained as above, but in some instances, e.g. Kārane, jore, dvāre, and yoge, the case may well be the instrumental, if the meaning of the postposition be taken into account. They are the following:—arthe “ with a view to ”, Kāje “ for ”, in order to, Kārane, jore “ on account of”, thekāne, badale “ in place of”, dvāre “ by way of ”, padakhe “ near ”, mukdbale “ in comparison with”, mokhare “ in front of“, yoge ” by means of“, lekhe “ at the rate of”, sāte “ in exchange for”, sthale, sthāne “ in place of ”. These are all locatives, and in some cases possibly instrumentals of nouns still in use and signifying the idea conveyed by the corresponding postposition. But tulya and sam “equal to” are adjectives, while lagto “pertaining to” and pharto “surrounding” are declinable participles or participial adjectives. The ne, which precedes them, is not the locative of the genitive, but the dative (objective) case ending.

In drawing attention to some of the archaic features of Khowar (Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan, p.71), Dr. Morgenstierne says: “The preservation of t as r … is a very archaic feature, with parallels only, to some extent, in Shina, some Kohistani dialects and Romany.”

The School of Oriental Studies has recently acquired a manuscript containing the complete text of the Jānakīharana—twenty cantos in all—and from it I publish the following sarga. As only cantos 1–15 have hitherto been edited, the contribution here presented should be of some interest, although the lack of other MSS. makes it impossible to produce a definitive critical text.

For some time past the writer has been endeavouring to collect material for the writing of an Economic History of Persia from the earliest times to the present. He has found himself greatly handicapped by the lack of accurate information respecting the earlier epochs of Persian history, and his researches in this direction are by no means complete.

The Campū-prabandha Ajāmila-mōksa is a little literary work belonging to Travancore. In publishing it I am relying on a Malayalam manuscript written on cadjan leaves, which I obtained from Mr. Tāzhaman Sankarar Tantri of Chenganur in the Travancore State. A piece of poetry interspersed with prose is called a Campū-prabandha, or Prabandha, in the Kērala country.

For some time past the writer has been endeavouring to collect material for the writing of an Economic History of Persia from the earliest times to the present. He has found himself greatly handicapped by the lack of accurate information respecting the earlier epochs of Persian history, and his researches in this direction are by no means complete.

Jnānadeva's commentary on the Bhagavadgītā, completed in the year A.D. 1290 as recorded in the iti śrī in chapter xviii, shows, after making allowances for the errors and glosses of copyists, the state of the Marāthī language at the end of the thirteenth century A.D. The oldest known existent copy is dated by the poet Ekanātha in the Śaka year 1506, corresponding to A.D. 1584.

The Pahlavi text which has been recently re-edited and translated by J. M. Unvala, entitled Drakht i Asurik, has not to my knowledge received any attention from Assyriologists. In spite of the difficulties entailed in dealing with a province of which I am wholly ignorant, I have been tempted to put some suggestions on paper in the hope that the meaning of this little-known text may be viewed in a fresh relation.

In the fourth volume of the Linguistic Survey of India, which includes most of the important varieties of Dravidian, Konow has tried to classify the languages described. Evidently Kanara goes with Tamil, Gondi with Kui, and Kurukh with Malto, while Brâhui and Telugu do not seem to be closely related to any of the other main divisions. Unfortunately the Linguistic Survey fails to give accounts of Kodagu (the language of Coorg) and Tulu.

Śankaráchárya, the great philosopher, the founder of Vedic Monism, the avowed and uncompromising opponent of Buddhism, the commentator on Sutras of Bádaráyana, the Upanisads and the Bhagavadgītá, flourished at the end of the eighth century A.D. His life has been written by his direct disciple Ánandagiri, in Sanskrit prose and also by Sāyanāchārya, the great Sanskrit scholar, who also held the proud position of minister to the state of Vijayānagar.

Tevaram , a condensed and figurative expression, means “a garland of verse addressed to God”, with the added idea that devotion is the “thread” on which the several “flowers” or verses are strung. It thus forms a very fitting title for the devotional songs of the three saints, Appar, Sundarar, and Sambandar, the greatest of the sixty-three exponents of the Śaivite religion in the Tamil country.

(a) (1) Considerable confusion exists as regards the Statical Participles.

On page 174 of his Grammar, Platts states: “ Rem. The so-called Staticals differ from Conthraatives in denoting temporary or accidental state. The two forms are clearly distinguished in most native grammars, but are strangely misunderstood by European grammarians, who teach that the participle is inflected in Staticals and not inflected in Continuatives! Now, the fact is that it is just to indicate duration or continuity (and occasionally a habitual state) that the particle (sic) or verbal adjective is changed into an adverb and inflected. This is evident from such forms as chalte chalte thak gayā, ‘ I wearied through much or continued walking …,’ ”

One of the most popular stories in India and East Asia is the story of the adventures of Rāma, whose consort Sītī is carried off by the giant king Rāvana. From this event proceeds a great war, which leads to the destruction of the tyrant and the return of Sītā.

Wāman Pandit was born in the second half of the seventeenth century (the definite date is not obtainable) at the village of Kumthe in the Satārā, district of the Bombay Presidency. According to the latest research work of the Bharata Itīhāsa Samśodhak Mandali of Poona, Wāman was a native of Bijāpore. In his early days he received some training in Sanskrit from his father, who was the village-astrologer by profession, and who had considerable knowledge of Sanskrit. When about 18 he went to Benāres, the centre of Hindu learning and also the most sacred place of the Hindus. He was accompanied by his wife, an incident which shows that his parents were dead at that time. He applied himself rigorously to the study of Sanskrit for not less than twelve years, and having completed his education, in all departments of knowledge, he returned to his native place.

In Les langues du monde Bloch describes the two genders of Gôndi as representing the oldest Dravidian gender-system. This idea is wrong. Kanara and Tamil have three genders in the singular, male-personal (masculine), female-personal (feminine), non-personal (neuter); and two in the plural, personal and non-personal. The same basis, is implied by the other Dravidian gender-systems.

On the occasion of a wedding, a pūjā, or any other festival, it is quite a customary thing for a well-to-do man in Bengal to engage a kaihak or a pañchāli or yātrā party to give a performance or a series of performances in the courtyard of his house, where a considerable portion of the population of the village assembles as an audience, and sits, often right through the night, listening to song and speech, dialogue and story. It is for the most part by means of such performances that a knowledge of the myths and traditions of Hinduism is preserved in the minds of the illiterate mass of the population of Bengal.

The material for the study presented here is derived from two sources: (1) grammatical and linguistic notes, sentences, and texts prepared by Bishop Patteson at the Melanesian Mission Headquarters at Kohimarama, Auckland, New Zealand, in the years 1863–4, and subsequently included by H. C. von der Gabelentz in the second part of his Melanesischen Sprachen, 1873; (2) grammatical and linguistie notes collected by myself, along with a certain number of words, in the year 1925 at Sa'a, Mala. This is the only study of the language made since 1873.

Platts's Urdu Grammar contains rules to help in determining the genders of nouns. As it was published in 1873 and has not been revised since, one would expect that here and there some restatement might be necessary. This short article deals with the Arabic infinitives commonly used in Urdu. Platts gives seven forms (see especially pp. 25–9), pointing out that six are generally masc. and one fern. In every case but one there are exceptions.

In the phonological development of a language the shortening and loss of vowels are usually ascribed to the absence of stress-accent on the syllables containing those vowels. When in their study of Prakrit Phonology Drs. Pischel and Jacobi found numerous instances of the loss and shortening of vowels, they explained them in the light of stress-accent. The one supposed that the musical accent of Vedic also acted like stress, while the other assumed that after the pitch-accent had died out, a stress-accent developed in Sanskrit and Prakrit which was placed on the penultimate or ante-penultimate syllable as in Latin. Now about the nature, history, and even the very existence of stress-accent in PI or its subsequent stages nothing certain is known. The Prātiśākhyas and Śiksās are silent on this point. The reason of their silence may be that perhaps the stress-accent originally fell on the same syllable as the pitch-accent and was not strong enough to draw attention. The following remarks of Dr. P. Giles and Professor D. Jones lend great support to the probability of this surmise:—

I. Truth is the fundamental attribute of the Saint.

II. It is said, “Great is the Principle of Origin indicated by Ch'ien, from it all things derive their beginning”; here Truth is presented to us as it is at its source.

III. It is said, “It is the law of Ch'ien, by its changes and transformations to impart the Nature and Decree in their perfection to each individual thing”; here Truth is presented to us as it is in its accomplishment.

IV. Thus Truth, in its beginning and in its consummation, is the pure and spotless, and the supremely good.