Since the commencement of Cuneiform studies in Europe attentionhas been paid to Armenian or Yannic inscriptions; and, as is well known, it was the unfortunate Schulz who first copied and collected the inscriptions of Yan. These copies, full of faults, were those on which scholars commenced their Yannic studies. After Mordtmann, Robert, and F. Lenormant, Professor Sayce deciphered and published, as far as possible, bis own and his predecessor's researches.

About four miles from Larnaca, in Cyprus, on the western shore of thegreat salt lake from which the town. (Túzla) takes its Turkish name, standsthe Khálat-i-Sulṭán Tekyé, a much - frequented Moslem shrine. The situation is picturesque. The noble outline of the mountain of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce or Stavro Vouni) bounds the view on the west; andthe domes and minaret, embowered in. garden and grove, are not without grace, especially when seen reflected in the still waters of the lake. The shrine is held in great veneration by Moslems of every country; vessels carrying the Ottoman flag salute it as they pass, and the gardens are a favourite place of resort on Musalmán holidays. The whole is dedicated to a lady known as Umm Ḥarámbint Milḥán, whose body lies in this holy place.

The Congress was held, as announced, at Paris, from the 5th to the 12th of September. The attendance was unusually large, about eight hundred members having given in their adhesion, of whom nearly a hundred were ladies.

The regular Greek inscription on the coins of Hermaeus is ΒΑΣι٨ΕΩΣ ΣΩТΗΡΟΣ | ΕΡΜΑ;ΙΟΥ; but, on some of his bronze coins, and on the whole bronze series issued by him conjointly with Kujula Kadphises, there appears an inscription which differs from this in two respects— (1) the substitution of ΣТΗΡΟΣ for ΣΩТΗΡΟΣ, and (2) the addition of the syllable Σ;Υ.

In the introduction to his edition and translation of the Madhura Sutta (J.R.A.S. 1894, p. 341 ff.) Mr. R. Chalmers calls attention to the Gāthā concerning the pre-eminence of the Kṣatriyas, which the Buddha quotes at the end of the Ambaṭṭha Sutta and elsewhere with great approval, and attributes to the Bramhā Sanaṃkumāra, the Sanatkumāra of the Brahmanical literature, who is described both as a teacher of the Yogaśāstra and as one of the mind-born sons of Brahmā, or as identical with Skanda. Mr. Chalmers thinks that the verse can hardly be a concoction of the Buddhists, as the exposure of such a forgery would have been inevitable. On the other hand, he believes that with the growing pretensions of the Brahmans such an utterance might have easily dropped out of the official recensions of the Brahmanical texts. But he expresses the hope that the verse may be discovered in Sanskrit, to the credit both of the Buddha and of the Brahmans.

The Gabrī dialect, as is well known, is spoken only by the Zoroastrians, or “Guebres,” of Persia (by whom it is called “Darī”), and is consequently almost confined to the towns of Yezd and Kirmān. It has been discussed, and specimens of it have been published, by Berésine, Rehatsek, Justi, Houtum-Schindler, and Huart (cf. J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, pp. 783–4), yet the total amount of material for its studyis so small that the short text which I now propose to publish will, I feel sure, be welcomed by Persian philologists. It was sent to me nearly a year ago, in response to a request more than once repeated, by my friend Ardashīr Mihrabān, whose hospitality I enjoyed during my three weeks' stay at Yezd in the early summer of 1888.

The Dîwân of the Huḏeilites must be regarded as our single remaining inheritance of a great mass of literature which formed an important part of the results obtained by the Arab philologians in their first endeavours to collect the old poetry of the Arabs.

Indeed, the history of Arabic literature, which—if it be ever once realised—must suffice for the oldest period with recording many lost productions of learning and diligence, has exactly this office to fulfil when it begins to give an account of the labours of philological workers in the field of ancient poetry.

The Royal Asiatic Society is indebted to the courtesy of the Royal Institute of British Architects for a copy of the article published in its Journal (vol. iv, 3rd ser., Nos. 2 and 3)—a paper read at a meeting of the Society in November last, by Mr. R. Phene Spiers, F.S.A., on the great mosque of Damascus. The paper offers us an historical account of the building, adescription of the surviving vestiges of the old temple, and of the Christian Church of St. John the Baptist, including the well-known Greek inscription over the Southern Gateway, particulars on the conversion of the building into a mosque by the Omayyad Khalīfahal-Walīd, of the changes the mosque has undergone during the past period of well-nigh twelve centuries, and last, though not least, itgives us a careful and minute description of the building as it existed previous to the fire of 1893. Thenumerous plans and drawings with which the paper is illustrated, whilst attractingnotice by their beauty, are of no small assistance to the reader in studying the text.

The large number of documents of a private nature found in Assyria and Babylonia makes it a fairly easy task to find out something about the every-day life of the people of those interesting districts, not only during later times, when the kings of the “later empire” ruled, butalso daring the period of the dynasty to which Ḫammurabi (identified with Amraphel) belonged (2300 B.C. and the three succeeding centuries). As the recently published second part of Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets contains some very good inscriptions of this period, I have translated a fewwhich will probably prove to be not uninteresting for such as study the manners, customs, laws, etc., of the ancient Semites.

Although the Indian and English newspapers have already published slight notices of the recent discovery of Kapilavastu and the Lumbini Garden, and the new Aśoka inscriptions will in due course be edited in the official publications of the Archaeological Survey, I think that the Society will be glad to see the actual words of the Lumbini Garden inscription, and some notes, based on local knowledge, concerning the most important archaeological discovery which has been made in India for many years.