The Karma-pa sect, an important offshoot of the bKa'-rgyud-pa, derives from dPal Chos-gyi-grags-pa, generally known as Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, who was born in A.D. 1110 at Dre-śod in East Tibet. He was, by some accounts, the first Lama to originate a continuous line of reincarnations lasting to the present day—a claim which is contested by the Lamas of 'Bri-khuṅ. At the age of 30 Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa became the principal disciple of sGam-po-pa, himself the chief disciple of rJe-btsun Mid-la (Mi-la-ras-pa), and so entered the direct doctrinal succession from Mar-pa, the founder of the bKa'-rgyud-pa sect. A pious explanation of the name Karma-pa is that an assembly of gods (lha) and Dakini bestowed on Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, in his sixteenth year, knowledge of the past, present, and future—together with a magical black mitre woven from the hair of a million mKha'-'gro-ma (angels or fairies). That story is found in vol Pa of the Chos-'byuṅ of dPa'-bo gTsug-lag; but however early the name Karma-pa came into existence its perpetuation was probably due to the association of Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa with the monastery of Karma gDan-sa, or Lho Karma'i sGar, which he founded in 1147 to the east of the Nom-chu, somewhere between Ri-bo-che and sDe-dge. A few years before his death in 1193 he returned to Central Tibet and in 1189 he founded mTshur-phu in the sTod-lun valley some 50 miles west of Lhasa.

This article considers two well-known texts that deal with questions of education and appropriate conduct for respectable Muslims in colonial India. The texts under scrutiny are Mirat al-Arus (The Bride's Mirror), and the Taubat-al-Nasuh (Repentance of Nasuh), completed in 1867–68 and 1873 respectively. The author was a Muslim publicist and a prolific writer who published numerous books in diverse genres. Nazir Ahmed (1830–1912) came from a family of distinguished maulavis and muftis of Bijnor (in the state of Uttar Pradesh) and Delhi. His father, a teacher in a small town near Bijnor, taught him Persian and Arabic. In 1846, Nazir Ahmad enrolled at the Delhi College and studied there till 1853. He began his career as a maulavi in Arabic, but soon (in 1856) became a deputy inspector of schools in the Department of Public Instruction. Later, after he had produced a superb translation of the Indian Penal Code in Urdu, he was nominated for the Revenue Service. He was posted as deputy collector in what was then called the North-West Provinces (i.e. modern U.P.), whence the name ‘Diptee (Deputy) Nazir Ahmad’ by which he is popularly known.

To Sir William Jones appears to belong the honor of first since the beginning of Sanskrit studies suggesting that Pythagoras derived from India the groundwork of his philosophy. His treatment of the matter, however, is inimportant compared with that that the Colebrooke, who discussed the question of the relation of Sāṃkhya and Phyhagoreanism in some detail and with his usual masteryof material. As often, his treatment remained for many years definitive; his arguments were repeated and extended, but nothing solid was added to the foundation which he had laid until in 1884 Dr. Leopold von Schroeder published his admirable study on Pythagoras und die Inder.

Among the pre-Mutiny writings of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817–1898), the Indian Muslim reformer, Āsār al-ṣanādīd, a history and description of Delhi, and its principal buildings and monuments, is a most impressive achievement. From the day of its publication onwards it has repeatedly been acknowledged as an important contribution to our knowledge of the history and archaeology of Delhi. However, on the whole, and in spite of recent re-editions of the work, no due attention has been paid to the fact that as early as 1854, i.e. only seven years after the first edition, Sayyid Aḥmad Khān published a second one remarkably different in form and content. We should like, in what follows, to present some evidence that may help to explain why and how this significantly altered second edition came about. This will also contribute to a better knowledge of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān's early intellectual development.

The Indian Ocean has for at least two thousand years served as a highway for the exchange of goods and ideas, and the cultural links between the lands bordering it are perhaps closer than over any other region of comparable size. The length of voyages undertaken since early times has been very great, as is forcefully demonstrated by the Indonesian colonization of Madagascar in the first centuries A.D. Commerce has been facilitated by the monsoon which in the western part of the ocean blows for roughly half the year from the northeast and for half in the opposite direction. The eastern and western shores of the western part of the basin share much the same climate and are suited to similar ways of life.

It is well known that most of the tales which make up the Divyāvadāna collection are to be found here and there in the Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. Cowell and Neil noted in the introduction to their editio princeps of 1886 that “although these (Tibetan) versions are often faulty and corrupt, yet without continual reference to them it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation of the Divyāvadāna”. Students of the Vinaya will probably agree that these editors, whose acquaintance with the Ḥdul ba seems to have been based upon English renderings of selected passages supplied by Léon Feer, here did less than justice to the skill and fidelity of the Tibetan translators and to the reliability of the Sanskrit manuscripts from which they worked. The extensive fragments of the Sanskrit text of the Vinaya published in the Gilgit Manuscript Series show on the whole a very close correspondence with their Tibetan counterparts, and a detailed comparison of about 200 pages of Cowell and Neil's text with the corresponding portions of the Ḥdul ba has satisfied me that where they diverge significantly the fault generally lies with the former.

Thinking that the Gańeśa Puráńa might throw some light on the origin of the Saiva worship, I lately took it up to examine it in that relation, I had not proceeded far in this investigation before I was fortunate enough to meet with two legends, which I conceive have a distinct reference to the rise and fall of Buddhism in India. One of these is contained in the first, and the Other in the second khanda or division of the Puráńa; and to their consideration I shall devote this paper, after a few brief general remarks on the work itself;

Amongst those sciences which, after a long interval of ignorance and barbarity, were revived by the Mahomedan Arabs, astronomy ranks very high; and it cannot be denied, that had not the Arabs applied themselves to it with great assiduity and zeal, and encouraged all that served to promote its dissemination and advancement, after it had remained almost totally forgotten from the time of Ptolemy, the application to its study would, perhaps, never have extended over so large a portion of the globe as it has done. Although the pagan inhabitants of Arabia, before the time of Islamism, were in the habit of observing the stars, many of which they knew, and denominated by names taken from pastoral life, and several of which they even worshipped as visible gods, yet of a scientific knowledge of astronomy among them no traces can be discovered. The revival, therefore, of this celestial science, was principally attributable to their Mahomedan successors, who introduced its study into Arabia, at a time when the countries around them were immersed in the most deplorable state of mental darkness, which could only be dissipated by slow degrees.

The mountainous region between the Assam Valley and Tibet, from Bhutan in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, is inhabited by a series of tribes which are all of Tibeto-Burman stock.

Our knowledge of ornamental Kufic inscriptions is chiefly based on the materials which have been found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Upper Mesopotamia. Although they are fairly numerous, a comparative study of the origin and general development of the different types of Kufic writing is not yet possible. Such a work would have to include the countries further East, and unfortunately they have not been thoroughly explored hitherto. But the few landmarks we possess show clearly that the outlying Eastern provinces produced a greater variety of decorative inscriptions than the West ever did.

Mrs. Jacob has provided us with a translation, for the first time in English, of the most important text in classical Cambodian literature, with an introduction and critical notes and lists, which will be of great help to anyone studying the Cambodian text. The Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa was composed anonymously by at least three authors over three centuries, and is divided into two parts. The earliest writer, of the sixteenth century, accounts for about a fifth of the first part, covering the main events of the Bālakāṇḍa and Ayodhyakāṇḍa. It was continued in the seventeenth century with the story up to Rāvaṇa's assembling the remnants of his army for the final battle with Rāma: but Rāvaṇa's death, the rescue of Sītā and her trial by fire, and the triumphant return to Ayodhya, are all missing. The second part of the Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa relates those events from the Uttarakāṇḍa which deal specifically with the later history of Rāma and Sītā: her second rejection and exile, the birth of their two sons, the meeting again, and Sītā's going down into the earth. This part is believed to have been composed in the eighteenth century.

To all those who take an interest in the early condition of India, and who are anxious to see that obscurity which hangs over the periods of its history prior to the Mohammedan invasion, dissipated, in however partial a degree, some most acceptable glimmerings of light have been presented in a recent continental publication. This work is derived from Chinese literature, and has been made accessible to European readers, by the talents and industry of some of the most eminent of those who have rendered Paris illustrious as a school for the cultivation of the language and literature of China. In the course of last year, a book, which was announced some years ago, but was suspended by the lamented death of its distinguished translator, the late M. Remusat, and again interrupted by the demise of another celebrated Orientalist, M. Klaproth, who had undertaken to continue it, was brought to a completion, and published by M. Landresse. It is entitled the “Foe Kúe Ki,” or “Relation des Royaumes Buddhiques,” and is an account given of his travels by Shi Fa Hian, a Buddhist priest and pilgrim, who went upon a pilgrimage to the chief seats of the Buddhist religion in India, at the close of the fourth century of our aera. Shi Fa Hian, or simply Fa Hian, a name which signifies, according to M. Remusat, “Manifestation de la Loi de Sakya,” or “Manifestation de la Loi,” quitted China with this purpose in the year of our Lord 399. He was six years on his route to Central India, including of course a residence, more or less protracted, at various places on the way; he spent six years in India, and was three years on his return, arriving in China a.d. 415. The accounts which he gives are such as might be expected from his religious character, and, to say the truth, are somewhat meagre, relating almost exclusively to the condition in which the religion of Buddha existed at the different places which he visited. Such as they are, however, they are exceedingly curious and instructive, even in this limited view, and exhibit a picture of the state of Buddhism in India, flourishing in some situations and declining in others, which, although we were not wholly unprepared to expect, yet we were hitherto without any accurate means of appreciating. Besides, however, their especial subservience to an authentic history of the religion of Buddha, the travels of Fa Hian are of great value, as offering living testimony of the geographical and political divisions of India at an early date, and one at which we have no other guide on whom we can rely. I have, therefore, thought that a summary review of the principal subjects which are described in the Chinese traveller's journal might not be unacceptable to the Society.

In 1848 Juynboll published the Arabic text with a Latin translation and elaborate introduction of a Samaritan work, which he called the Samaritan Chronicle. He printed it from a MS. in the Leyden library deposited there by Scaliger; this MS. belonged to the fourteenth century. It was written by two hands, the second part being of a somewhat later date. Juynboll was quite justified in callingit a chronicle, although the largest part of the MS. consists of the book of Joshua. It is a paraphrase of the book of Joshua of the Jewish Bible, containing chiefly the first chapters to which various legendary stories had been added. But the MS. contains much more. It starts with the appointment of Joshua as successor to Moses, in the latter's lifetime, then the history of Bileam, slightly differing from the record in the Bible, then also two different recensions of the death of Moses are given, after which, with a special heading, the book of Joshua begins. At the end of it the history is continued; it is very fragmentary. Within a very brief space the story of the Exile, under Bokht Nasar—the Arabic form for Nebuchadnezzer—is told, and then it is continued in the same brief form down to the time of Baba Rabba—second or third century—the great hero of Samaritan history. The Samaritans considered him as the one who had been able to throw off the yoke of the foreign rulers and to obtain for them a certain amount of political liberty.

The history of which this MS. is all that is known to exist, covered in its entirety the period between A.H. 360 and 447. This fragment—which forms the larger portion of its eighth part—commences towards the close of the year 389, and concludes early in the year 393. It is interesting, not merely as the oldest Arabic authority for the period, but more especially as affording a specimen of Oriental history written at first-hand, the facts being either within the writer's own knowledge or told him by contemporaries. A history compiled by these means is almost certain to present a picture of a period truer and more vivid than one derived from abridgments, such as the Kāmil of Ibn al-Aīr, where, all that seemed capable of omission having been discarded, little beyond the dry bones of history remains. But of histories of this type few have survived.

The territory occupied by the Kurdish race in historic times seems to have been the district called by the Greeks Kardûchia, and by both Greeks and Romans Corduene or Gordiaea, and by the Syriac writers Qardū, whence the earliest Arabic authorities derived the name Qardā, the country bounded roughly on the north by Armenia, on the west by the river Euphrates, on the south by the Arabian desert, and on the east by the ancient kingdom of Media. Strabo, the Greek geographer, states that Armenia and Atropatene consisted of prosperous districts, but that the northern part was a mountainous country occupied by wild tribes, such as the Kyrtii, nomads and brigands dispersed over the whole of Armenia and extending eastwards over the Zagros mountains. More closely he defines the land of the Gordiaei, whom the earlier writers called Kardūchi, by locating it on the banks of the Tigris and by adding that one of its chief cities was Pinaka, the modern Finik, “a very strong fortress, having three hill-tops, each fortified with its own wall, so as to form as it were a threefold city; yet Armenians subjugated it and Romans took it by storm, although the Gordiaei were apparently good builders and skilled in siege-works, for which reason Tigranes so employed them.”

Dynastic changes are not an uncommon feature in history. In the history of Sri Lanka they have been especially common and have sometimes taken place in such a rapid succession that one might form the impression of their being a recurrent feature. One observes the succession of the Moriyas by the Lambakaṇṇas, followed by the Pāṇḍyas and the Kāliṅgas. Usually such changes have been the result of the weakness of the central political authority, internal discord, factional disputes, and other such decisive forces which provided excellent conditions and ideal opportunities for ambitious kings, particularly from the sub-continent, to invade the island. Sometimes they have been caused by less hostile circumstances, at least in their initial stages, such as appeals for intervention by rulers to outside powers. There seem to have been certain special forces and features that marked the changes that occurred in the late medieval period. We shall be concerned here with a discussion of those forces with a view to understanding the special features of the process of change, the manner in which a comparatively insignificant clan of foreign descent acquired power and rose to the highest ranks of the governing élite, and also the forces that brought about its downfall. The question, “Why were the new élite unable to gain sovereign power when it was just within their grasp?” will engage our special attention.