The number of subjects now labelled as Oriental and the increasing development of knowledge concerning each, of these subjects, make it materially impossible for an individual to derive more than a fraction of the advantages offered by a Congress such as that recently held at Leyden. There were no fewer than nine sections (in fact, there should have been ten, a special section for Islamic Art having been eliminated) and over 200 papers were read during the five days that the Congress lasted, some of the sections sitting nearly five hours a day. It was inevitable that keenly interested delegates should again and again have to choose between equally attractive papers, especially where the third section (Central and Near Asia) and the eighth (Islam) were concerned.

In his al-Munkidh min al-Ḍalāl al-Ghazālī states that he studied the works of al-Muḥāsibī, together with those of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, al-Junayd, Shiblī, and Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī, and of these Ḥārith b. Asad al-Muḥāsibī (ob. 243/857) was the earliest and the most prolific writer, and to him al-Ghazālī owes more of his teaching than has been generally realized, and much that has been attributed to al-Ghazālī as representing his original ideas, is in fact based upon the earlier teaching of al-Muḥāsibī and, in many instances, is directly borrowed from him.

By the Great Ming Emperor the Karma-pa GŽu'u la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ ta'i śiṅ rtsi tsa'i hu'o was invited and was made chief of all the ban-dhe (Buddhist monks) in the Empire. At Liṅ-gu svi-sde (temple) he performed a great service of prayers for the Great Imperial Father, Tha'i Ju, and the loving Queen-mother in order to deliver all creatures in the world from the round of transmigration and from hell. The service began on the fifth day of the second month of the fifth year of Yun Lo. On the first day there appeared an iridescent cloud of five colours, beautiful to see, expanding and contracting in various ways, in brilliance like the Wish-granting Gem. Also, above the mchod-rten (stupa) of Relics a ray of light, like the full moon, shone out unblemished and flickering a little. Also, two bands of golden rays rose above the dwelling place of the Precious Essence of all Bygone Buddhas, the Religious King, Powerful through Great Compassion, the Karma-pa gŽu'i la'i ta'i ba'u hva waṅ zi then ta'i śin tsi tsa'i hu'o, the place where he performed the ceremony after having made the dkyil-'khor (mandala).

In recent years explorations of great importance have been conducted on a Buddhist site in the Pālnād taluk of the Guntur district of the Madras Presidency, lastly under the superintendence of Mr. A. H. Longhurst, of the Archaeological Survey of India. The site in question which comprises several ancient mounds is situated in the midst of wooded hills on the right bank of the river Kistna or Kṛishṇā, the Kaṇṇapeṇṇa or Kaṇṇavaṇṇā (Skt. Kṛishṇavarṇā) of Pali literature, at a distance of some 15 miles from Macherla and on the border of the Nizam's dominions. One of those mounds is known by the name of Nāgārjunikoṇḍa. Mr. Longhurst claims it to be the most important Buddhist site hitherto discovered in Southern India.

“What then was to be looked for in a remote and extensive empire, administered in all its parts by men, who came out boys, without the plenitude of instruction of English youth in learning, morals, or religion; and who were let loose on their arrival amidst native licentiousness, and educated amidst conflicting superstitions?”

This complaint was made in 1805 by Claudius Buchanan, in the first influential evangelical tract on India. It was directed against the way of life of the servants of the East India Company in the second half of the 18th century. If certain assumptions are altered, Buchanan's complaint could be changed into praise: these men were not completely indoctrinated by narrow European, English and Christian values, but arrived with a remarkable openness towards what they found in the East, ready to accept different values and customs and to adopt a new style of life. What they were lacking was not so much education as indoctrination.

IN the latest addition to the series of the Kurdisch-Persische Forschungen, Dr. Karl Hadank, of Berlin, has presented Iranian philologists and students of Persian dialects with a work of great interest and importance.

The series was initiated by the late Oskar Mann (ob. 1917) and the present volume, Abt. III, Band I, 1926, as well as its predecessors is based chiefly on the material collected by him. Its main contents are described in the title: Die Mundarten von Khunsâr, Mahallât, Natänz, Nâyin, Sämnân, Sîvänd und Sô-Kohrûd.

In the last century the Vedic pantheon served as the best illustration of the theory that the gods of primitive and archaic religions were personifications of natural phenomena. The gods of the Vedas were seen as more recognisably such than, for example, the Greek gods, who had acquired more elaborate anthropomorphic features through Homer's poetic skill, so that their supposed natuie-substratum was hardly or not at all detectable. In India the matter seemed clear. Thus Oldenberg believed that the Vedic gods were predominantly deified Naturwesen, agents behind the great happenings and processes of nature. Moreover, he maintained that different gods in the Vedas had reached different stages of anthropomorphism and independence from their nature basis and he made much of the job of determining this degree in individual cases.

In the volume of the Journal of the Royal Asiatio Society for the year 1848, is to be found a paper descriptive of such coins of the Sultáns of Ghazní as chanced to form part of the varied numismatic accumulations of Mr. Masson, gleaned, under his personal superintendence, chiefly to the northward of the metropolitan province from which the dynasty takes its name.

Hitherto our knowledge of ancient Buddhist architecture in India has been derived mainly from the rock cut examples. These, though most valuable for the purpose, from their number and immutability, have the defect of being all interiors, and we obtain little or no knowledge from them of what the external appearance may have been of the structural buildings which they represent. It is doubtful whether we ever shall know, in so far as the Vihâras or monasteries are concerned. These seem, like those of Burmah at the present day, to have been principally constructed of wood, and have perished by fire or decay; but our knowledge of the Topes or Sthûpas is daily extending, and we may hope soon to understand them and their arrangements with tolerable completeness.

Among the instruments of Mediaeval Europe that contributed most to the progress of the art of music the lute and rebec stand pre-eminent. That they were introduced into Western Europe by the Arabs is generally admitted, and for that reason the question of their original adoption by the Arabs themselves is of some importance, especially in view of the statements of Miss Schlesinger; not only in the above extract, but in the works to which she refers us.

Abān is one of the least known poets of the second century a.h. References to him and his poetry are in the Kitāb al-Aghānī and a few allusions to him in the Fihrist, the History of Baghdad, by al-Khaṭīb, the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, and the Kitāb al-Bayān of al-Jāḥiẓ. But these are so inadequate and sporadic that it is impossible to form a coherent picture either of his personality or his work.

It has often been said that there is no Grammar in Chinese; and the statement is true. When we speak of “grammar,” with reference to the written characters, or even to the spoken language, of the people of China, the term must be understood in a peculiar sense. Grammar, as the Greek derivation shows, has to do with words, and is applicable only to languages that have an alphabet; whereas the Chinese written characters were at first pictures and ideagrams, and they have continued to be so substantially during all the millenniums of their use, down to the present day.

I now proceed to discuss in detail the ascertained facts of each reign, inscriptions, of course, being the principal source of information, and in doing so shall permit myself a certain amount of latitude in digressions upon cognate topics. The inscriptions of the greatest value for establishing the genealogy of the royal family are Nos. 3, 8, and 19–22 of my List.

The three tablets which follow have been selected on account of their uncommon nature, and because of the unusual words or expressions which they furnish. The collection contains other documents equally interesting, and some of these will probably be placed before scholars from time to time, should their difficulties yield satisfactorily to study and research.

The accompanying two plates of coins present a type which is quite new to the numismatic world, if we except two or three specimens published in the second part of Vol. I., of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, from the collection of my ingenious and indefatigable friend Colonel Tod, who has left no branch of Indian antiquities unexplored or unadorned. We are informed that he met with these coins in the whole of the district from Oujein to Cutch, as far as the Indus, and he ascribes them to the Balhara sovereigns, mentioned by the Arabian travellers of the ninth century, as translated by Renaudot, who conceives these princes to be the same as the Zamorin. In this attribution I must differ with Colonel Tod for several reasons, independent of one to which I shall now confine myself, and which is to be found in the text of the above work; viz., that the drachms coined by the Balhara princes are said to weigh one-half more than the Arab drachm, whereas the coins in question do not even reach the weight of this last.