The publication by Benveniste of the facsimiles of all Sogdian manuscripts preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Monumenta Linguarum Asiae Maioris, vol. iii, Codices Sogdiani, Copenhagen, 1940) enables us to check the correctness of Gauthiot's reading of the Vessantara Jātaka (published in JA., 1912, 163–193, 430–510). Since most people interested in Sogdian are more likely at first to try to read the texts so far unpublished than to compare the original with texts already published, it seems convenient to give a list of the comparatively few misreadings or misprints that have been noticed in Gauthiot's edition. I have also thought it useful to confirm the reading of spellings which one would have suspected to be misprints. Thirdly, there will be found a few attempts at explaining unclear words or passages. Here and there I have made use of Dr. Henning's kind permission to quote from his photographs of unpublished texts.

These inscriptions were found among the rubbish surrounding the Great Temple at Buddha-Gayâ; this rubbish had accumulated during the progress of the alterations and improvements carried out by the Burmese deputation who visited the Temple in 1877. Quoting from p. 65 of Dr. Rajendralála Mitra's work on Buddha Gayâ. we learn “that certain Burmese gentlemen, deputed by his Majesty the King of Burmah, arrived at Buddha Gayâ, at the beginning of 1877, and with the sanction of the Mahant, who is the present owner of the Great Temple and the surrounding ground, carried on demolitions and excavations round the temple, which in a manner swept away most of the old land-marks. The remains of the vaulted gateway in front of the temple had been completely demolished and the place cleared out and levelled. The stone pavilion over the Buddhapad had been dismantled and its materials cast aside on a rubbish mound at a distance. The granite plinth beside it had been removed. The sites of the chambers brought to light by Major Mead had been cleared out. The drain-pipe and gargoyle which marked the level of the granite pavement had been destroyed. The foundations of the old buildings noticed by Hiouen Thsang around the Great Temple had been excavated for bricks and filled up with rubbish. The revetment wall round the sacred Bodhi tree had been rebuilt on a different foundation on the West.

A part from a few brief notes of a general nature, the Marsden manuscripts were first described in any detail as a collective whole, by Father H. Hosten, S.J., in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, August, 1910 (New Series, vol. vi, No. 8, pp. 437–461) from material supplied to him by Messrs. Philipps and Beveridge. With the transfer of the most valuable portion of William Marsden's magnificent Library from King's College to the School of Oriental Studies in 1918, the Marsden MSS., both those in the British Museum and those now in the School, formed the topic of two articles in the Bulletin of the S.O.S.—the first by Sir Denison Ross in vol. ii, pp. 513–538 (1923), and the second by Father Hosten, S.J., in vol. iii, pp. 129–150 (1925). A few years later Sir Edward Maclagan, who had already published some documents in extract in the JASB. for 1896, catalogued those dealing with Northern India and Bengal amongst the Letters and Reports which he listed on pp. 369–388 of his standard work, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London, 1932).

In this Journal, 1906. 912, line 13 f., for “Pāvakā (sic), and Vēṭhadīpa, and caused,” etc., read “Pāvakā (sic), Vēthadīpa, and Kusinārā, and caused,” etc.

With this Part we attack the series of the Normal Numerals, together with those characters which have been singled out, as homophones of more elaborate structure, to serve as Accountants' or Bankers' alternative forms, less liable to fraudulent alteration.

Inscriptional records show that from some time in the ninth or tenth century a.d. the era of b.c. 58, the chief reckoning of Northern India, became known by such names as the time called Vikrama, Vikrama-kāla, i.e. “the time or era of Vikrama,” Vikrama-saṁvat, the years of king Vikrama, the years founded by Vikramā-ditya, the years elapsed since the time of king Vikrama. The same source of information shows that, at a later time, the Śaka era of a.d. 78, which, though it too was of northern origin, became the chief reckoning of Southern India, came to be known by such names as Śālivāhana-Śaka, i.e. “the Śaka or era of Śālivāhana,” the Śaka or era of the glorious and victorious king Śālivāhana, the years of the Śaka or era established by Śālivāhana. And the popular belief, as presented, for instance, in the introductory passages of some of the Pañchāṅgs or Hindū almanacs from which I have given extracts in this Journal, 1911, p. 694, is that the Vikrama era was founded by a king Vikrama reigning in b.c. 58 at Ujjain, in Mālwā, and the Śaka era was founded by a king Śālivāhana reigning in a.d. 78 at Pratishṭhāna, which is the present Paiṭhaṇ, on the Gōdāvarī, in the Nizam's territory.

Muḥammad I, the founder of the Naṣrid Sultanate in 629/1232, originated the first dynasty, al–dawla al–ghālibiyya al-nasriyya, as it has been called in modern times from his laqab, al-ghālib bi-llāh (= “the victor through Allāh”). He was succeeded by his son Muḥammad II al-Faqīh and grandsons Muḥammad III al-Makhlū‘ (= “the Dethroned”) and Abū I-Juyūsh Naṣr, with whom the direct masculine line of the al-Aḥmares (= “the Reds”) ended. Naṣr was dethroned by his nephew Ismā‘īl I, the son of their paternal sister Fāṭima and her husband the ra‘īs of Málaga, Abū Sa‘īd Faraj, who was also a member of the royal family.

I shall deal here with the sultans of the second dynasty up to the death of Muḥammad V, and will concentrate on its three main figures: Ismā‘īl I, his second son YūsufI and grandson Muḥammad V, and deal only briefly with Muḥammad IV - the firstborn son of Ismā‘īl I – and Muḥammad VI el Bermejo (the Redhead), a relative and brother-in-law of Ismā‘īl II. However, we should first establish the identity and origins of Ismā‘īl I‘s father, to understand why he did not become the first sultan of the new dynasty.

The Armenian cemetery at Iṣfahān is an arid and waterless tract of desert land lying to the south of the city, between the Armenian suburb of New Julfa and the high hill known as the Kūh-i-Ṣuffah, and was granted to the community by Shāh 'Abbās the Great (1587–1629), who gransported the colony of Armenians from Julfa on the Araxes to his capital and granted to them the tract of land on the southern bank of the Zāyandah Rūd, opposite to the city, where the suburb which they named after their old home in Armenia now stands. Here they have enjoyed, from the time of āh 'Abbās, various privileges, not uninterrupted by periods of oppression and persecution. They have been allowed to build churches, of which the suburb now contains twelve, including All Saints', the Cathedral Church of the extensive Armenian diocese of Persia and India, to practise their religion freely, and even to offend the ears of pious Muslims with the sound of church bells.

The path followed by Protestant Christianity in Meiji Japan (1868–1912) has frequently been viewed as an index to the general process of Japanese development up to World War II. The beginnings seemed promising. According to the accepted picture, the early converts included a significant number of young ex-samurai whose clan had not supported the winning side in the Meiji Restoration. The new regime dismantled the feudal order which had given their lives purpose and meaning, and they felt alienated and rejected as a result. They first came into contact with Christianity from a desire to study Western learning and thus make a new start in life; they were indifferent, or even hostile, to the Western religion itself. The early missionaries and foreign teachers who led them to Christianity in spite of such initial attitudes seem to have been, if not men with actual military experience, people of strong personality and puritanical ideals. Matching samurai stereotypes of courage and single-minded determination as they therefore did, they attracted the admiration and loyalty of their lordless pupils, who pledged themselves, through their teachers, to Christ. Conversion was often accompanied by the discovery of a new purpose in life, the task of spreading the new religion. This was a restatement of the samurai obligation to set a spiritual example to others, and also represented a patriotic mission to save the nation both morally and materially, through providing the proper basis for the adoption of Western civilization.

SEVERAL systems of expressing numbers, used in India, have been explained by Professor Bühler in §§ 33 to 35 of his work on Indian palaeography. There is a system, a highly interesting one, which was not noticed by him, because it has not been found used in inscriptions or in the pagination of literary works; namely, that of the astronomer Āryabhaṭa. It has been mentioned briefly by various other writers. And it was considered in some detail by Mr. C. M. Whish in 1820, and at more length by M. Léon Rodet in 1880. Those two treatments of it, however, scarcely suffice to do justice to it; particularly from lacking any table to make its details clear. And it deserves a full exposition, because it is of special interest in connection with two topics which have been reopened lately by Mr. G. R. Kaye; namely, the early use of the abacus in India, and the development of the decimal notation, that is, of the system of the nine significant digits 1 to 9, with the zero, cipher, or naught, used with place-value so that any particular sign denotes units, tens, thousands, etc., or the absence of them, according to its position as written in a row of figures. I propose, therefore, to consider it exhaustively here, but without venturing at present to offer any opinion on the two topics which Mr. Kaye has reopened: I only seek to exhibit fully, with a few introductory remarks about Āryabhaṭa himself, a system of numeration which must certainly be regarded as an important factor in considering them.

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.

The Kaliyuga era is a Hindū reckoning beginning at mean sunrise, 6.0 a.m., Laṇkā or Ujjain time, on Friday, 18 February, b.c. 3102. Its 5013th year will have begun just before the time when these pages come into the hands of readers of this Journal.