The Kyauksè district is at once the smallest and the richest in Upper Burma. Two rivers, the Zawgyi and the Panlaung, enter it from the mountains in the Shan States to the east, and from them spring a number of canal systems. These existed long before the British annexed the country, and tradition ascribes them to the great king Nawyӑta (Anuruddha), who reigned from 1044 to 1077 a.d.

In the Address delivered by him at the Second International Congress of Orientalists, in 1874, Prof. Max Miiller remarks, “No real advance has been made in the classification of the Non-Aryan Indian dialects since the time when I endeavoured, some twenty years ago, to sum up what was then known on that subject in my letter to Bunsen, ‘On the Turanian Languages.’” A table of the Indian languages is given by Max Müller in that most popular work of his, eight editions of which have already been published, the Lectures on the Science of Language. A very few lines are devoted to these languages in the Lectures: for further particulars we are referred to the above-mentioned letter on the Turanian languages.

I must request the indulgence of friendly readers for the following paper on Bali. Not having prepared myself for this labour on Bali itself, I had not the means of collecting and properly arranging all my materials. I could only use for this purpose a small portion of the valuable manuscripts of the priests which were placed at my disposal. I could not avail myself of the information of the natives as to many points, and I was deprived of a great part of my manuscripts. These circumstances will, perhaps, in some degree excuse the many deficiencies, best known to the writer, of this preliminary account. I have divided this work into three divisions — 1st, language and literature; 2nd, religion, worship and cremation; 3rd, castes and royal races. With this is given a short description of the Balinese Calendar.

In the April issue, 1934, of this Journal, I edited and translated the first chapter of this work of the great Nāgārjuna, still a fundamental treatise in the monasteries of Tibet. I now publish the remaining portions of the second and fourth chapters, the second being incomplete and the third entirely missing. The fifth and last pariccheda contains chiefly vinaya-rules, and will be published in a subsequent issue, along with the Tibetan text and the English translation of the missing portions.

Not everyone will agree with the view that the Pilgrimage is Burton's “outstanding contribution to travel literature”. What is beyond dispute is the unique place it occupies among his writings. Conscious of the significant part it played in her husband's life and career, Lady Burton placed it at the head of the Memorial edition of his works. “Although he has been the author of some eighty books and pamphlets”, she wrote, “I think that this original edition of three volumes is the one that his name should live by…” Just over thirty years later, it provided the starting-point for the Royal Asiatic Society's first Burton Memorial Lecture.

The history of Aḥiḳar and his nephew Nadan forms part of Eastern popular literature. When publishing my history of Roumanian popular literature seventeen years ago (Bucureesti, 1883) I devoted a special chapter to the Roumanian versions of this history (pp. 104–114). I was the first to recognize the connection between the Roumanian and Slavonic versions and those contained in the Arabian Nights. I then drew attention to the intimate relation between this legend and that which has entered the Greek life of Æsop. Since that time scholars have paid much attention to this legend, especially as through Meissner's studies it is being considered as one of the lost Apocrypha mentioned already in the Book of Tobit.

In a recent paper Dr. Bloch has made a valuable contribution to knowledge by publishing an edition and translation of the inscription on the colossal statue found at Sāheṭ-Māheṭ by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1862–63. When Dr. Bloch published this paper he had not read my essay entitled “Kauśāmbī and Śrāvastī.” I have since sent him a copy of my paper, but he still adheres to the view expressed in his. I may therefore deal with Dr. Bloch's statement of opinion as if he had expressly considered my views and had rejected them. I propose in the following pages to defend my position.

In Calcutta, you desired that I would procure, and send to you, some Sheep of the Isle of Ormus, should it be in my power; which, however, it has not been. This circumstance impressed me with an idea of your conceiving the introduction of that animal into Great Britain, likely to prove beneficial to her agricultural and manufacturing concerns; and, by a natural inference, leads to a belief, that a communication respecting the domestic animals of a country, new to Europeans, may not be wholly without interest.

Any researcher into the pre-modern history of India inevitably faces the problem of source material, and the creative genius of medieval Indians furnishes us with a wide range of sources; innumerable files of original documents, multi-volumed chronicles, bulky treatises, etc. A great number of travelogues enables us to view medieval India through the eyes of visitors from all parts of the globe. The source to be analysed in this article will hardly stand comparison with the above-mentioned materials. It is a biography of an insignificant man, a family history of modest middle-class people unconnected with court intrigues and political battles. And the title of the book is anything but serious. Ardhakathanaka means “Half a Tale”. The author, a Jain merchant named Banarasi Das, completed it in 1641, being fifty-five at that time; the ideal life span of the great Jain sages was believed to be one hundred and ten years. Thus Banarasi, who harboured no ambitions to equal the great sages, titled his autobiography “Haifa Tale”, displaying a somewhat bitter humour (he died shortly after completing the book).

The interest which attaches to Kanishka is manifold. Primarily it is Buddhist. Kanishka convoked the fourth great Buddhist Council, the Council held in Kashmir, which gave consistency and official sanction to the doctrines of Northern Buddhism and led to its adoption by the Yue-che, who in their turn became ardent propagators of the faith, diffusing its light among the nomads of Central Asia and introducing it to the knowledge of the cultured Chinese. The Buddhists in the north-western corner of the Panjāb preserved the memory of their royal patron; they adorned his memory with miracle and legend; they placed him by the side of Aśoka, the first great foster-father of their religion; and vague reminiscences of Kanishka lingered in this region to the time of the learned Alberūnī and of Kalhaṇa, author of the metrical Chronicles of Kashmir.