Depuis qu'en avril 1911, a paru dans ce même journal une note sur la langue et l'écriture des anciens documents sogdiens retrouvés par M. M. A. Stein, dans une tour du vieux limes chinois, il nous a été possible d'étudier de plus près ces textes si curieux. M. M. A. Stein, d'accord avec M. Cowley, qui les avait le premier examinés, a bien voulu mettre à notre disposition les photographies des six “lettres” les mieux conservées. Celles-ci, malgré l'âge, et bien qu'elles soient toutes plus ou moins détériorées, constituent des documents précieux; ce ne sont pas le moins du monde des débris: toutes présentent, malgré leurs lacunes, des morceaux d'un seul tenant, dont la longueur est variable, il est vrai, mais qui fournissent des phrases suivies, des formes nominales et verbales variées, bref de véritables petits textes.

This Sútra consists of about two hundred and fifty characters. It is repeated in the course of the daily worship of the Buddhists, by rote, as a mantra would be repeated (according to Colebrooke, pp. 8, 9, Relig. of Hindoos,) by the Hindoos. In its composition it resembles, or appears to resemble, the sacred writings of the Brahmans. No author's name is attached to it. It does not even begin with the usual preface “thus have I heard” (evam mayá śrutam). But we have mentioned in it the Rishi to whom it was communicated, and the Devatá from whom it proceeded. In this particular, at any rate, it strongly resembles the Vedic model. And when we recollect that the later Buddhists attempted in every possible way to absorb the system of the Brahmans in their own, yielding so far as they dared to popular superstitions, we shall not wonder in finding so many similarities, in externals at least, between the two religions.

As this valley bas never been visited by an European traveller, the little I have to say about it may make it acceptable to the Society. On one occasion I tried to visit it in company with Dr. Hooker, but unsuccessfully, as, after reaching the top of the Chola Pass—14,900 feet—which leads into it from Sikim, we were met by an officer of the Chinese Government at Lassa, with a military escort, who refused us permission to enter the valley. The particulars I have to state may, I believe, be relied on, as during many years I had constant opportunities of communicating with traders and others residing in the valley, in addition to the officials of the Sikim Raja, who annually sojourned in it from May to November. The route from Darjeeling to Choombi was described by me many years ago, as also the route from it to Lassa; but no one has described the valley itself.

The nature of Akbar's arrangements for the assessment of the land revenue in the newly acquired province of Bengal is a matter of some historical importance. It concerns the eighteenth century as well as the sixteenth, for the controversies which marked the early years of British rule found common ground in the revenue roll attributed to the year 1582; and, now that the famous Fifth Report of the Select Committee of 1812 is being studied so widely in India, it is desirable to know just what Todar Mal did, and just where Grant and Shore took erroneous views regarding the nature of his action.

Cambodia was a kingdom in which the English East India Company took only a limited and spasmodic interest in the seventeenth century so that little attention has been devoted to its activities there. References to the Company's Cambodian settlement in the 1650s have usually been erroneous or misleading. Dr. John Anderson made the first serious mistake when he wrote of an English factory in Cambodia between 1654 and 1659, and later English writers, particularly E. W. Hutchinson, have followed him. Dutch historians also have been affected: H. P. N. Muller, in his preface to De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja en Laos, cites Anderson as his authority for stating that in 1656 the Dutch Company bought the English factory established two years previously. As we shall see, servants of the English Company were sent to Cambodia from the presidency at Bantam in 1651 and withdrawn by order of the directors in 1656; the Englishmen in Cambodia after that date were private traders using the Company's name for their own ends. The episode now to be recounted was therefore an isolated incident with no long-term consequences, but with some intrinsic interest.

Several of the manuscripts from Tunhuang in the invaluable Choix de Documents Tibétains conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1978 and 1979) record cases of civil litigation and administrative or judicial decisions on them in some instances. Fewer deal with criminal matters. Although students of Tibetan have referred to such documents in books and articles, published translations of any of them appear to be rare. In Journal Asiatique, 1955, Mlle Marcelle Lalou, a pioneer in studies of the Tunhuang material, translated Fonds Pelliot Tibétain (Pell. T.) 1089 concerning the appointment of a wide range of officials in the border region. The translation of orders on two short petitions from citizens of Shacu is included in Tsipon Shakabpa's Tibet, a Political History (1967). F. W. Thomas translated the “Law of theft in Chinese Kansu, a IXth–Xth century fragment from Tunhuang”, in Zeitschrift für Verglekhende Rechtswissenschaft, L (1936).

Some twenty years ago, Professor J. N. Banerjea identified a statue on the north gopura of the Naṭarāja temple at Cidambaram (Fig. I), hitherto considered to represent Agni, as Yajñapuruṣa, a minor manifestation of Viṣṇu. No other image of Yajñapuruṣa being known at the time, this was an important identification. It served, moreover, to call attention to the iconography of an extremely unusual figure as it possessed two heads (with their necks, rather than simply a pair of faces) and was directly derived, so Banerjea claimed, from a verse in the Ṛgveda.

As is usual in texts which were composed more as panegyrics than as strict historical records, the epitaph inscription for Wu Liang , who died at the age of 74 in A.D. 151, tells of his virtues and his qualities as a scholar. But in common with a number of famous men of ability and learning of his time, such as Zhang Heng (78–139), Ma Rong (79–166) or Wang Fu (c. 90–165), Wu Liang showed a persistent reluctance to serve in an official capacity, preferring to devote himself to a study of history and philosophy. In all probability he felt, like the others, that in the prevailing political circumstances, it was not possible both to embark on an official career and to retain a measure of personal integrity. Be that as it may, other members of his family evidently felt no such scruples; his nephew Wu Ban , for example, was appointed to be chief clerk at Dunhuang.

Crete is a large off-shore island, and whether it belongs primarily to Europe or to Asia is a moot point—it is equidistant from the European and Asiatic mainlands of the Aegean. Inevitably it has served as an intermediate link in the transmission of influences in either direction. Hence I am pleased to see its indigenous script accorded a place in this Symposium, alongside many other famous problems.

A Few months ago I endeavoured to give to an audience in this room some account of an ancient Arabian poet, 'Abīd of Asad, whose remains, recently recovered from the oblivion of the past, are now being printed. I explained the great position which the poet occupied in old tribal Arabia: how his championship in verse was as important to the interests of the clan as the prowess in arms of its men of war; and how in the southern deserts he held a place scarcely inferior to that of the prophet in tribal Israel. It was his business to extol the deeds of the warriors, to inspire the members of the tribe with fortitude and devotion to its interests, to maintain its cause in all contentions, to strike its enemies with biting satire, and to uphold the heroic ideal of conduct to which all should aspire by praise of the worthy, and especially by consecrating the memory of the valiant dead in those noble laments which form the most beautiful and touching monuments of old Arabian verse.