Published in 1879 in the Tahzīb ul-Akhlāq as well as in book form, Maulana Altaf Husain Hali's Musaddas on the Ebb and Flow of Islam (better known as Musaddas-e Hālī) is a unique text. The poem, which recalls a glorious Islamic past and mourns its decline in India, both drew on the Urdu shahr āshob tradition that had developed since the eighteenth century as well as innovatively developed a very Arabic “flavour” and style that was uncommon at the time. While C. Shackle and J. Majeed have analysed Hali's use of typical Arabic literary devices in their excellent study and edition of the Musaddas, they conceded that “the overt influence of Arabic poetry is less easy to establish”. However, new evidence from the Aligarh Institute Gazette of 1878 brings another piece to the puzzle and enables us to situate Hali's Musaddas in its broader historical and literary context: indeed, two articles written by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in January of that year show that Hali's masterpiece was in fact conceived as an Urdu re-adaptation of an Arabic classic, al-Rundi's famous Lament for the fall of Seville.

In the series of papers of which this is the first, I hope to give, as opportunity allows, as full as account as possible of the contents of the Bhakta-māla of Nābhādāsa, a work of which the importance has long been recognized, but the difficulties of which have hitherto repelled serious students. It is acknowledged as the great authority in regard to the history of the saints of the Bhāgavata reformation started by Rāmānuja, Madhva, and other, in the twelfth century A.D., and also, incidentally, as a compendium of the tenets of that religion. Indeed, a somewhat minute study of the work has convinced me that it is impossible to understand the various phases of modern Hinduism as professed by the Vaiṣṇava sects without a knowledge of its contents.

The vicissitudes of a Jewish secretary, whom his master, an Emir in Damascus, compelled to adopt Islām and to accompany him on his pilgrimage to Medinah and Mekkah, are described in a number of skilfully wrought Hebrew poems printed here for the first time. They are extant in two manuscripts, Oxford MS. Heb. f. 3 and 4 (see Neubauer-Cowley's Catalogue of Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian, vol. ii, Nos. 27262–4 and 2766). They are designated as Ḳaraite hymns (so on the backs of the binding), but have really no connexion whatever with this sect. The handwriting seems to be of the fourteenth century, but furnishes no conclusive evidence.

In this article I suggest that, although many Jews perished during the wars between the Mamluks and the Franks during the thirteenth century's second half, and others migrated to different Jewish communities in the Middle East and Europe, some Jews migrated to Safed, Jerusalem, and perhaps to Gaza as well. A significant number of the Jews who lived in Safed and Jerusalem during the early decades of the fourteenth century were of a Western European origin but were not newcomers from Europe. I suggest that some of these were Jews who previously lived in Acre and Tyre and migrated to Safed and Jerusalem either shortly before the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem got its coup de grâce, or afterwards.

The obelisk of Maṭara has long been known to bear the oldest Ethiopic inscription extant. Maṭara is a small village near Senafe, in the province of Akkele Guzay, on the frontier between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the obelisk stands on one of the most majestic sites of the Abyssinian highlands. When Littmann visited Maṭara at the beginning of this century he found the obelisk, broken into two parts, lying on the ground. The Italian Administration later had the broken monument repaired by means of two iron bars (see Photograph I) and set upright again in what was (wrongly !) believed to be its original position.

In the pages of this Journal I have repeatedly had occasion to insist, especially in my notice of M. Blochet's most useful Catalogue (J.R.A.S. for 1901, pp. 331–3), on the unique value of the magnificent collection of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish MSS. formed by the late M. Charles Schefer, and now belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale. During a fortnight spent in Paris in the Easter vacation of 1901, I was able to examine more closely some of the most interesting MSS. comprised in this collection, and in particular the MS. which forms the subject of this notice, which is remarkable alike for its age (it is dated the beginning of Ramaḍán, A.H. 635 = April, A.D. 1238); its fine, clear, careful script; the interest and authority of its contents; and the fact that it is, so far as I have been able to ascertain, unique.

The Ṛg-Vedic hymn X. 95, describing the story of Purūravas and Urvaśī is of considerable interest and obscurity. It has attracted the attention of priests and scholars alike from the days of the Brāhmaṇas, with the result that different versions of the story have come down to us with unrestricted freedom. Geldner has recorded eight sources of the story: (i) the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa; (ii) the Kaṭhakam; (iii) Ṣaḍguru-śiṣya's commentary on the Sarvānukramaṇī; (iv) the Harivaṃśa Purāṇa; (v) the Viṣṇu Purāṇa; (vi) the Bṛhaddevatā; (vii) the Kathāsaritsāgara; and (viii) the Mahābhārata. To the above a few more works, such as the Vāyu Purāṇa, the Mātsya Purāṇa, and the Rāmāyaṇa may be added to make the list more comprehensive. However, Kālidāsa made the story more popular through one of his finest plays, Vikramorvaśīyaṃ.

The following article was originally suggested by a notice in Beal's “Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.” The sūtra is there selected as a type of the latest phase of Buddhist literature, not only on account of its own peculiarities, but owing to its religious importance among the Chinese, which caused the imperial rescript for its translation and general promulgation, of which an English version is there given. The two parts of which this sūtra is composed are mentioned as Nos. 15 and 16 of vol. 14 of the Tibetan “Gyut,” by Csoma Körösi in As. Res. xx. p. 529; the names of the translators fix its date as earlier than the ninth century.

IN the following pages an attempt is made to present the substance of Māwardi's chapter on the office of Ḳāḍi in his Aḥkām Sulṭāniyya, ed. Enger, Bonn, 1853, pp. 107–28, together with some illustrations of how the rules and requirements there laid down were conformed to in practice. The “crux” of the chapter, ‘Omar's instructions to the Kāḍi, pp. 119–20, has been removed by Professor D. S. Margoliouth (see ante, pp. 307–26), and his help has been forthcoming in the case of other difficulties. Māwardi's entire treatise on Moslem political law is in course of translation by Count Léon Ostrorog, and the merits of the earlier of the two published instalments of the work have been pointed out in the Journal, 1901, p. 906. The later instalment covers chapter v of the treatise, the one immediately preceding that on the office of Kāḍi. That chapter may be taken to represent the Moslem ideal, and it is of interest to consider to what extent the ideal was transmuted into fact. The task is not easy. Of Moslem legal procedure we know but little, the nearest approach to law reports being the notices of judicial proceedings in works dealing with the lives of judges. Such a work is the history of the Ḳāḍis of Egypt by Abu ‘Omar al-Kindi (ob. a.h. 350; B.M. Add. 23,226), now being edited in the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial” Series by Mr. A. R. Guest, and the edition will include extracts from a ninth century work on the same subject—the Raf' al-Iṣr of Ibn Ḥajar Asḳalāni, Paris Ar. 2149, in which are preserved large portions of the work composed in continuation of that of al-Kindi by Ibn Zūlāḳ, ok a.h. 387, of which no copy is known to exist.

Scholars have known of Ibn al-Azraq and his Ta'rikh Mayyāfāriqin since at least 1882, with the publication of F. Wiistenfeld's Die Geschichtschreiber der Araber und ihre Werke, but it seems that the history received its first thorough reading in 1902, when Amedroz published a summary of the recently acquired British Museum (now British Library) manuscript. Amedroz concentrated only on the latter folios of the MS, particularly those that cover the Marwanid dynasty, and in his interest in the second half of the work he has been followed by B. A. L. Awad, who edited the section on the Marwaīnids, C. Hillenbrand, who edited and translated the 18-odd folios that concern the early Artuqids, and A. Savran, who made some brief comments on the two MSS of the history. It is of course natural that the later sections of Ibn al-Azraq's work have attracted historians' attention, since it is here that our author, who was born in 510/III6–7, and who probably died sometime during the last quarter of the sixth century, has important things to say about northern Mesopotamia in his day. For this reason his history was used by later authors;8 as Hillenbrand has noted,9 here he fills a gap in the historical record.

Much of what I shall say here has appeared before in scattered essays which are not likely to have been seen by many members of the Royal Asiatic Society, and I am grateful for the opportunity now given for considering the question as a whole, and for hearing in the discussion which will, I hope, follow, any arguments that may have escaped my notice for and against the theories advanced. The object of the present paper is to show how the beliefs of the early Nestorian Christians have been absorbed by Hinduism, and how they have profoundly affected the religious system current over a large portion of India.

It is doubtful whether there has existed in our time any European who possessed so extensive and so profound a knowledge of Persia as the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, who died at his house at Fenstanton, Hunts, in his 70th year, on June 16, 1916. And he was one of those generous scholars who, while seemingly taking more pleasure in the acquisition than in the publication of knowledge, waa ever ready to place at the disposal of all students the rich stores of his learning. To this generosity Lord Curzon, in the Preface to his valuable work on Persia (London, 1892, vol. i, pp. xii–xiii), bears eloquent testimony in the following words:—

“Of these coadjutors the first, alikein authority and in the extent of his assistance, has been General A. Houtum-Schindler, a gentleman who, after filling many important posts in the Persian Service, is now acting as adviser to the Imperial Bank of Persia in Teheran. To the advantage of long residence in the country he adds the erudition of a scholar and the zeal of a pioneer. He has personally revised nearly every page of these volumes, besides supplying me with much of my original information; and I tremble to think how many errors they might have contained but for his generous and never-failing cooperation. Few men so excellently qualified to write a first-rate book themselves would have lent such unselfish exertion to improve the quality of another man's work.”

Buddha Gáya was probably, at one time, the centre of religion in India, and the residence of a powerful king. I am informed by the mahanta of the Sannyásís, who now possesses the great convent at the place, that when his predecessor Chétan Gírí came, which may be perhaps one hundred and twenty years ago, it was entirely overrun with bushes and trees; and the sect of Buddha, in its vicinity, may be considered as completely extinct. A few persons, indeed, come occasionally from distant countries to visit its ancient monuments. Last year (1811) a man of some rank, with several attendants, came from a country called Tamsa-dwíp-mahá-amarapura-paigú, sent by Mahá-dharma-rájá, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, a Cshatriya of the family of the sun. This is, no doubt, the king of the Burmas; and hence we infer that the old man, since the year 1795, when I visited his capital, has been induced to set up the doctrine afresh. In the year 1795 the priests of Buddha were seriously alarmed at the influence which the Bráhmans had then acquired.

That India is not the cradle of the Brahmanical faith, may be a proposition startling to many who are not acquainted with its ancient literature. To the orientalíst of the humblest pretension, however, it needs no proof. The predecessors of the Brahmans, it is admitted by all who hare considered their records and traditions, were first associated together as a religious fraternity in a country beyond the Indus, or exterior to the Himálaya mountains. Our greatest men are divided in their opinions as to the country from which they came. Sir William Jones brings them from Iran, or Central Asia; Adelung from a similar locality; Klaproth, from the Caucasian mountains; Kennedy, from the plains of the Euphrates; and Schlegel, from the borders of the Caspian Sea. The theories of these scholars are all plausibly supported; and they generally agree in this respect, that they take it for granted, that the Brahmans in ancient times were found in the territories immediately north of India. The occurrence of about three hundred Sanskrit words in the Persian language, the Hindú notion of the northern position of the residences of the gods, the situation of the Manusarovar, or Lake of Intelligence, still a celebrated place of religious pilgrimage, and the source of the river Brahmaputra, whose etymological meaning, the “son of Brahma,” is similar to that of the usual designation of the priestly class to whom I refer, are in favour of this agreement. After the Brahmans entered India, they continued for a considerable time to inhabit its northern territories. The “Holy Land” of Manu, which is of no great extent, lies between the Drishadwatí and Saraswatí. On the banks of the latter river, according to some authorities, lived Vyása, the reputed compiler of the Vedas and Puránas. In the north are to be found the shrines, junctions of rivers, and lakes, esteemed most sacred by the Hindús in all ages.

The popular image of pre-1950 Tibet is of a remote land seldom visited by outsiders. But more than a hundred British officials served in Tibet during the early part of this century. Between 1904 and 1947 Agents from the Indian Political Service, and supporting staff, were stationed in Gyantse and Yatung, under the control of the Political Officer in Sikkim. An Agency was also maintained at Gartok in Western Tibet, where a native officer was posted as the Trade Agent. After 1936 a mission was stationed at Lhasa. The last British official in Lhasa, Hugh Richardson, departed in 1950 following the Chinese invasion of Tibet. For the British Trade Agents, an almost forgotten section of British colonial administration in Asia, Tibet was an official posting. Their isolation, and the lack of trade, meant that they had the time to study a variety of aspects of Tibet, and to gain a great knowledge of the country and its people.

Two evening meetings of the Royal Asiatic Society were held at the Society's Rooms, in Grafton-Street, on the 1st and 8th of June, when Dr. Hugh Falconer gave a discourse, in two lectures, on the ancient animal races of India, as indicated by the Fossil Fauna of the Sewalik hills. The first meeting was occupied with a general description of the Sewalik fossil animals. Dr. Falconer referred to the antiquity of the human race in India, and the spreading of its mythology, arts, and sciences, over other nations: they had extended to Greece and Italy through Egypt. There is a limit to antiquarian research, at the point where we cease to have indications of the human race. If we desire to dive further into antiquity, we have to fall back on the monuments and inscriptions constructed by nature, on the fossil remains of the extinct races of animals which formerly peopled the earth. Some of the Sewalik fossils appear to afford grounds for entertaining the presumption that it may be possible to connect the human epoch with very remote times. The Colossochelys Atlas, or gigantic fossil tortoise of India, discovered by Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer, supplies a fit representative of the tortoise which sustained the elephant and the infant world in the fables of the Pythagorean and Hindu cosmogonies.