The present narrative was composed, a few months ago, at Tangier, under my direction. It was written by the Taleb Sidi Ibrahim ben Muhammed, of the town of Messa, in the province of Sús. It was first written in the Berber language, and thence translated into Arabic, from which I made an English version.

Naghm (pi. Anghām) and Naghmah (pi. Naghamāt) mean “Vocal melody”, both being derived from the Arabic “To speak, hum, or sing in a low pleasant tone”. Such were the classical meanings of those terms, in distinction from LAḤN (pi. ALḤĀN), which stood for “melody” whether in the vocal or instrumental art. Thus, one of the earliest Arabic books on music—the Kitāb al-naghm (Book of vocal melody)—by Yūnus al-Kātib (d. c. 765), became the source book on this subject. Then came Isḥāq al-Mauṣilī (d. 791) who wrote the Kitāb al-naghm wa'l-īqā' (Book of melody and rhythm). Yet the famous Kitāb al-aghānī of Al-Iṣfahānī (d. 967) introduces each song under the title of saut, although that is only done so as to indicate the singing (taghannī) of a poem. Later, the term naghm came to be used in a modal sense, equating with the Sanscrit rāga and jātī, and the Persian āvāz. We know of the naghm in the modal sense as early as Al-Kindī (d. c. 874), one of them (called ṭarā'iq) being known as Iṣfahān. In the Mafātiḥ al-'ulūm of Abū 'Abdallāh al-Khwārizmī (d. c. 1000), these modes (dasātīn) were attributed to the famous Bārbad of the court of Khusrau Parviz the Sāsānī ruler. Al-Mas'ūdī (d. c. 957) names one of these modes as mihrbānī (cf. mihrgānī) among the ancient Persian modes, whilst Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) mentions a mode (ḍarb) called nāqūsi, which is the 26th of the Sī laḥn of Khusrau va Shīrīn of Nīzāmī of Ganja (1203).

There is something in a name. Properly it ought to comprise all, or at least much of what is contained in the thing named. The name is therefore a very weighty and important word. In dealing with it, we may be struck as the Tartars were, when they first handled iron; for it evidently gave them the impression that it contained some mysterious substance, some kind of stuffing, concealed under its surface; and therefore they called it timur, i.e. ‘a stuffing, a filling, or something filled, stuffed.’ The Turkish language is remarkably transparent in an etymological point of view, most of its names being still easily traceable to their roots and to their original signification.

The transcription of the Cuneiform signs presents a problem much more difficult than that of the transcription of the ordinary Semitic alphabetical scripts. The object of transcriptions of Cuneiform signs is not merely that of obtaining phonetic perfection, but it must also distinguish the signsemployed for the same sounds. In the earlier stages of Assyriology Delitzsch and others adopted the system of accentuating the signs, and before a larger number of homophones were discovered this system sufficed, and has beenadopted for the transcription of both Sumerian and Semitic texts. But at present there is complete anarchy among Assyriologists in transcribing Cuneiform texts. A tablet of the Rassam Collection in the British Museum, which the writer recently copied through the kindness of Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, groups together the homophonic signs. On this tablet there are, for example, eight different signs for the phonetic syllable eš. nine for še, eleven for gir, and eighteen for ge! It is not possible to devise eleven and eighteen different accents for thesevalues. The writer, therefore, proposes to introduce the method of numbering the signs with inferior exponents, eš1 eš2 eš3; ge1, ge2, ge3, etc., following a suggestion made by Dr. A. Walther, ZA. xxix, 147. [The idea was taken from Weissbach.]

When Muslim forces under the Ghurid sultan, Mu'izz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām, made their first major breakthrough into Hindūstān in the 1190s, they brought with them two institutions that had long since taken root in the Islamic world. One was the iqṭā' or assignment of land or its revenue, in some cases in return for military service (sometimes misrepresented as “fief” on the Western European model). The other was the mamlūk, or military slave. Mamlūk status, it should be stressed, bore none of the degrading connotations associated with other types of slavery: mamlūks – generally Turks from the Eurasian steppelands – were highly prized by their masters, receiving both instruction in the Islamic faith and a rigorous training in the martial arts, and were not employed in any menial capacity. The mamlūk institution, whose origins go back to the first century of Islam, came into vogue from the first half of the third/ninth century, as the ‘Abbasid Caliphs built up a corps of Turkish mamlūk guards and their example was followed, with the disintegration of their empire, by the various autonomous dynasties that sprang up in the provinces. Turkish slave officers themselves went on to found dynasties, as in the case of the Tulunids and the Ikhshidids in Egypt and the Ghaznawids in the eastern Iranian world. The institution surely entered upon its heyday in the seventh/thirteenth century, with the military coup of 648/1250 in Cairo: a group of mamlūk officers overthrew the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and inaugurated a regime in which slave status was the essential qualification for high military and administrative office.

The pergunnah of Chota Nagpore is about ninety-five miles long and eighty broad, and is bounded on the north by the pergunnah of Ramghur, to the south by Gangpore and Singbhoom, to the east by the zillah of Jungle Mehauls, and to the west by Sirgooja. A large portion of the pergunnah is uncultivated, and its aspect hilly and jungle; but there are parts highly productive and well peopled, such as Loadugga, Pitonia, Burkaghur, Govindpore, Tamar, &c., &c., the soil of which places is extremely rich and fertile; and owing to the rain which frequently falls in these parts, and the general humidity of the atmosphere, the ground produces the most abundant crops without the fostering aid of irrigation, and often in seasons when they fail altogether in the neighbouring pergunnahs. The climate, from the setting in of the rains until about the middle of December, is extremely unhealthy; indeed, to the inhabitants of other parts of the couutry who may be compelled by business to journey into and sojourn in the pergunnah at that season, it may be accounted deadly.

The date of Kaniṣka is not a subject which I should have expected to be discussing in public. It is one of those long-standing problems in regard to which one at an early stage conceives an opinion or receives a bias, but which, either for lack of decisive evidence, or because the mind, after considering many conflicting views, is incapable of an act of faith, one leaves in the sphere of things unsettled. I myself should have been well content that the finishing stroke should be dealt by the spade, which even now is probing the ruins of Taxilā. Moreover, at the time when Mr. Kennedy first propounded to me his conclusions, I was fresh from the perusal of Professor Oldenberg's paper, which seemed to have said the last word in the discussion. If we have now invited a debate, and one at closer range than a trimestrial journal allows, the responsibility rests with Mr. Kennedy's extensive articles, their confident tone, and the interest which they have evoked.

In January and February of 1954 the writer travelled some 4,000 miles through the Northern Eegion of Nigeria in search of Arabic manuscripts for the Library of the University College of Ibadan, and also to make a survey of the indigenous Arabic literature of the peoples of the Western Sudan. There was no means beforehand of determining whether any manuscripts would be found at all, or whether, if they still existed, their possessors would part with them. The tour proved profitable in both respects, however; over 150 works were obtained, most of which are unknown outside Nigeria and very few of which have ever been printed. Some were generously donated, but most were purchased at the “market price”, for the scribes are still busy in the more remote districts, although the popularity of the printed texts from Egypt is an increasing threat to their livelihood. In Kano, the largest town of the Northern Region, it was impossible to find a scribe at work and there Arabic manuscripts were, in consequence, rare and expensive. Some local bibliophiles, understandably reluctant to give or sell volumes which they could not replace, nevertheless lent them for microfilming. There was, generally, considerable interest shown towards this work and, since returning to Ibadan, manuscripts have been received by post from self-appointed agents, which is most encouraging.

That history may be read as literature is an aesthetic judgment, which does not deflect from the essential difference between the two modes. To paraphrase Gibbon, who above all in this context knew what he was talking about, “the end of history is truth … the end of poetry is pleasure”. History, by definition, must fail to attain its ultimate goal of recreating the past “exactly as it happened”: that such is the case, whether because of the fallibility of the human intellect, or the difficulty (but not impossibility) of constructing history in a non-linear mode, or even – that stock excuse of historians – the doubtful, maybe putatively “fictional” quality of “the sources” – does not mean, as is from time to time suggested, that the attempt should not be made, or that history and fiction are indistinguishable. Intent, in this context, is all, nor should one forget that earlier proponents of fictionalised history may on occasion prove to be somewhat uncomfortable intellectual bedfellows.

The supreme importance of the Rig-veda in all questions bearing on the history of the Aryan mind, and on the development of the religious idea in man, gives interest to every attempt to throw light on that priceless heir-loom of India. Much has already been done by able scholars, in many ways, to investigate the language and ideas enshrined in the Rig-veda-sanhitâ; but no one has yet discovered the principle on which the hymns are arranged among themselves, or has advanced beyond the mere consciousness expressed by Prof. Max Müller in his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, that “there is some system,” “some priestly influence,” “traces of one superintending spirit,” and such-like generalities. The object of the following paper is to show the principle which regulated the formation of the Sanhitâ, the aggregation of hymns into Maṇḍalas, the reason for the positions assigned to the Maṇḍalas, and the method followed in placing each particular hymn. If my deductions prove accurate, it is evident that a fresh impetus will be given to the study of these remarkable documents, for the clue to the labyrinth will be in the hands of future investigators.

Among the tablets acquired by the British Museum in 1884, is one of peculiar interest. It is a tablet of unbaked clay, 6⅛ in. by 7¾ in., inscribed, on both sides, with two columns of writing in the Cuneiform or wedge-character. This tablet is one of a series which must have contained, when entire, a complete chronicle of all the important events which had taken place in Babylonia, Assyria, Elam, etc., in ancient times. The text (of which a paraphrase has already been published by the present writer) begins with the reign of Nabonassar (747 B.C.), and ends with the accession of Šamas-šum-ukîn or Saosduchinos, brother of Aššur-banî-âpli (667 B.C.). The subject of this tablet was continued on others of the series, a part of one of the tablets, referring to the reign of Nabonidus and relating the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, having been acquired in 1878.

Although the rāgamāla miniatures are well known among art historians, scholars have hitherto paid little attention to the texts occurring on them. This remarkable fact might be attributed to the indifference of the art historians, for whom the chief interest lay in the paintings themselves. It should, however, be borne in mind that to those scholars who were also interested in the texts—as for instance O. C. Gangoly, who in the second volume of his famous book Rāgas and Rāginīs traced a number of Sanskrit dhyānas and Hindī dohās appearing on the front or reverse of rāga miniatures—the musical treatises to which these texts often refer were almost inaccessible, because most of them existed only in manuscript. Only very recently have a number of saṃgīta texts been edited.

Having been led from the interest which has attached to Mr. Colebrooke's opinion, on the subjects discussed in Professor Whitney's paper, to examine the very copious memoranda on Hindu astronomy, which are in my possession, I think I am in a position to clear up some of the points which have given rise to this controversy. It seemed to be so improbable that Mr. Colebrooke should have taken such pains to identify the constellations named in the passage of the Jyotish, and have so pointedly referred to the double observation of the solstices as determining the epoch of the observation, while he was really grounding his opinion on the position of another asterism, that I thought the subject merited a closer scrutiny.