Whilst I was engaged last year in making a catalogue of the Oriental MSS. comprised in the libraries of the Society and the Oriental Translation Committee, I met with the historical MS. which is the subject of the following letter. I, at that time, applied to the Council of the Society for permission to forward a description of the MS. to M. Quatremere, who is employed in editing the only portion of the work hitherto known, in the hope that he would represent the matter to the French Government, and cause our MS. to be published in the “Collection Orientale,” as a sequel to his “Histoire des Mongols.” The council acceded to my request, and I accordingly wrote to M. Quatremère on the subject, but whether on account of my letter not having reached its destination or from the press of business, he has not as yet returned any answer to my communication. In the mean time, I think it desirable that the existence of this important volume should be made known to the public, and I have accordingly drawn up the following account of the MS. for insertion in the Journal of the Society.

Le fascicule du mois de Janvier 1911 du JRAS. contient un memoire de M. A. Cowley intitule “Another Unknown Language from Eastern Turkestan”. dont il parait impossible de dire qu'il n'est pas “sensationnel”. nous apporte en effet une ecriture inconnue d'origine arameenne, une langue mysterieuse, des documents d'un type precieux et rare puisqu'il s'agit de lettres et non de textes publics religieux ou civils; il nous fournit enfin des textes dont il est possible de determiner l'age de facon approximative, dont la haute antiquite est a peu pres certaine et qui proviennent du limes chinois lui-meme, d'un point situe, il est vrai a l'ouest de Touenhouang mais a l'extreme limite de ce que Ton peut appeler le Turkestan. Pour tous ceux qui s'interessent a l'histoire de l'Asie, a la resurrection des langues, des peuples, et des civilisations qui ont vecu entre la Chine, la Perse, et l'lnde, que d'attraits nouveaux et de problemes irritants!

From several centuries before the Christian era a double stream of traders and adventurers began to flow into Indo-China from, respectively, Northern and Southern India, reaching the upper parts of the peninsula by land through Burmā and its southern coasts by sea, and founding there settlements and commercial stations. Brahmanism and, later on, Buddhism (third century b.c.), with most other achievements of Indian culture, followed in the wake of these pioneers; and thus it is to ancient India that Indo-China owes her early civilization. By the dawn of the Christian era, as I have elsewhere demonstrated, Buddhism had already gained a firm foothold on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula near the head of the Gulf of Siām, whence it advanced and soon spread all over the country of the Më-Nam Delta. On the other hand, Brahmanism had established itself in Central and Northern Siām, where Swankhalôk and Sukhôthai formed its principal foci. It is not till about four centuries later that we begin to hear of Nagara Śrī Dharmarāja (Dharmanagara), or Ligor, as the chief centre of both Buddhism and Brahmanism on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula; and to find both faiths—but more especially Buddhism—firmly established in the territory of P‘hraḥ Prathom in the present Nakhōn C‘hai Śrī province, in the Më-Nam Delta.

Consider the following passages from vocabularies:—

(1) CT. xiv, 3, K. 4325, iv–vi, 11. 18–25: ib. 5, K. 4368, iv–vi, 11. 8–16; and for col, iv, presumably 81–7–27, 147 (Meissner, Suppt., pl. 27):—

(2) CT. xiv, 14, K. 4396, 11. 10–13, dup. ib., S. 995, rev. 4–7:—

Most dynastic lists of the Gupta kings state that Kumāragupta I was succeeded by Skandagupta. However, it is widely accepted that Skandagupta did not accede to the throne peacefully. Nor is it certain that the succession was immediate, since there is a gap between the known dates of Kumāragupta's and Skandagupta's reigns. This paper is concerned with the events following the death of Kumāragupta, using numismatic evidence as the primary source, and inscriptional and other epigraphic evidence as further support. Some of the numismatic evidence is new, and even the evidence that is not new has so far received little attention in the literature on the succession after Kumāragupta. Questions are raised about one particular theory that is presently enjoying some currency, that Skandagupta was challenged primarily by his uncle Ghaṭotkacagupta. Some other possible scenarios for the political events in the period after the death of Kumāragupta I will then be proposed and analyzed.

The majority of Arab weather prognostics are, as might be expected, concerned with the winter season, when the changeable weather gives scope for forecasting. The summer months in most Arabic-speaking lands are rainless, and except for wind changes offer little or no field for the activity of the weather prognosticator. The sun and moon, the stars, the rainbow, mist, dew, thunder and lightning, birds and insects all form constituents in Arabic weather forecasts.

The author of the Tohfat-al-Giráni states, that “the country of Sindh takes its name from Sind, the brother of Hind, the son of Noah. It is reckoned the forty-third of the sixty-one countries of the universe. The line of the second climate passes, from the north, directly through its centre; and although Sindh is situated in the five first climates, it nevertheless chiefly appertains to the second, and, consequently, lies in the region of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.” It would be difficult to discover where the author quoted has found these grandsons of the patriarch; indeed, as is usual in such genealogies, they are probably altogether imaginary. The Hindú writings may, perhaps, afford some more satisfactory explanation of the name; but I have not been so fortunate as to meet with it. As far as I can learn from such sources, this country was called Sindhúdès, or “the country of the ocean,” alluding doubtless to the river Indus, which receives that dignified appellation in their sacred writings. The same authorities also state Sindh to have been governed by a Xhuthi, named Jayadrat'ha, who was slain in the civil wars of the Pandús; and it has, in consequence, sometimes received the name of Jayadrat'hadès, after that chieftain.

After Aden came under British rule (1839) its Jewish community was reinforced by Jewish immigrants from inland Yemen and also from other Middle Eastern countries. Some of the Adeni Jews, most of them British subjects, entered the Indian-British commercial network and expanded it to East Africa, mainly to Ethiopia, founding commercial strongholds there. From the late nineteenth century, Jews coming from Yemen joined the existing Adeni settlements.

This paper compares the reasons for the emigration to Ethiopia of Adeni Jews and Yemeni Jews, and their economic and social status under Italian colonial regime (established in Eritrea in the 1880s). It discusses relations between these Jews, which it argues, were determined by the position of each group in the colonial hierarchy, and by the necessity of sustaining religious-communal life. Thus, in spite of their shared Yemeni origin and attendance at the same communal institutions, ethnicity and religion proved weaker than social and economic considerations, and the two groups cultivated a separate identity.

Halper 331 is the fragment of a codex that has been styled the ‘oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah’. It preserves the opening of a Jewish legal document dated to the year 1182 (Seleucid era), which appears to have been copied into this codex, probably as a formulary, not long after this date, in the late 9th century. In this article, the text of this fragment, in Aramaic and Hebrew, is edited, and its identification as the beginning of a marriage contract (ketubbah) is evaluated. Its Egyptian provenance is questioned, partly because the earliest evidence for the introduction of the Seleucid era by Jews in Egypt dates from the mid-10th century. The article surveys the history of Jewish dating methods in early medieval Egypt and the Near East, in an attempt to clarify this question. The specific date of the document deviates from the rabbinic calendar, but agrees with that of the contemporary Jewish Near Eastern sectarian groups of Abū ʿImrān al-Tiflīsī and Ismāʿīl al-ʿUkbarī; this document could thus uniquely attest one of these sectarian Jewish calendars.

In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1930 Professor Langdon illustrates (Pl. IX, Fig. 4) a curious pottery stand found at Hursagkalamma, Kish. This, he states, is only found below the flood stratum down to waterlevel, i.e. prior to 3,200 B.C., according to his dating; and it may possibly be the niḳnaḳḳu of Babylonian ritual which was in common use, according to the texts, right down to the Persian Period. During my work at Kish I found a similar stand—now in the Field Museum, Chicago—in the same area of the site. These stands which average 2½ feet in height are shaped rather like an hour-glass, and are open throughout at the topand base. Moreover, they are ornamented with triangular incisions which sometimes pierce the side entirely, sometimes only partially so.