The Geography of Mesopotamia during the epoch, of the Baghdād Caliphate has not, I think, received the attention which the subject deserves. With the exception of the small maps found in the Spruner-Menke Atlas, I believe no detailed description or delineation of the country at this date has been attempted. Yet it must be admitted that the history of the Abbasids is almost incomprehensible without such an aid; for the physical and political condition of the country was not then what it is now, as a glance at the accompanying map will show.

Now six leagues after the Nahr Kūthā has been led off from the Euphrates, this last divides into two branches. Of these the (true) Euphrates passes on down to (the town called) Ḳanṭara-al-Kūfa, then it runs past the city of Al-Kūfa, where there is a Bridge-of-Boats over it. And after this it flows into the Swamps.

The first definite statement with regard to a knowledge of the art of writing in Corea belongs to A.D. 372, the same year in which Buddhism was introduced from Tsin in Western China. The standard history of ancient Corea, known as the Tong-kuk-thong-kam, or, more briefly, the Tongkam, informs us that in this year “Kokuryö established a High School, in which pupils were taught.”

The accompanying words and phrases of Southern Chin, as spoken at the foot of the Arakan Yoma Mountains in the Minbu district, were taken down a few years since by Major B. A. N. Parrott, I.S.C., who later on presented to me the book in which they were, written, along with others on Oriental subjects. They are interesting as representing the most Northern dialect of this language, which reaches its most Southern point in the Sandoway district. (I pass by the dialect spoken in Bassein and the South of Henzada as being much corrupted by the extended intercourse which has there taken place between the Chins and the Burmans.) In publishing now this Vocabulary of Minbu Chin it has seemed advisable to compare it word by word with that of the Sandoway district, not merely in order to show more clearly the dialectic variations which exist, but also as an assistance towards the elucidation of the still obscure philological laws which obtain in this family of languages. In a speech which has suffered so extraordinarily from phonetic corruption and decay as this latter, all evidence which will in any way tend to join together the scattered links of verbal stems and endings must be considered as scientifically useful.

From two of my friends, Professor De Goeje and Mr. Hogarth, I have had the good fortune to receive many corrections for my recent paper on Ibn Serapion, and these I now hasten to publish, as throwing much new light on the subject of the geography of Mesopotamia in the time of the Caliphs.

The stone which bears this inscription is in the wall of a small building which is close to some ruins about a mile east of Ghaṭayāla, a village situated about twenty miles north of the city of Jodhpur. It contains twenty-two lines of writing, which cover a space of about 2′ 2″ broad by 1′ 9″ high. The first twenty lines are well preserved; of the two others the greater part is effaced or broken away, together with any subsequent lines of writing which, the inscription originally may have contained. The size of the letters is about ⅝″. The characters are Nāgarī; they closely resemble those of the Jodhpur inscription of Bāuka, and have been drawn and engraved with the same care and skill. The language, up to nearly the end of line 20, is Māhārāshṭrī Prākṛit; the small remainder is in Sanskṛit; and the whole is in verse. In respect of orthography it will be sufficient to state that the letter b, when it is not combined with another consonant, is denoted by a sign of its own, not by the sign for v.

The Literature of China has been arranged by its scholars, as is well known, in four great divisions, bearing the names of Classical, Historical, Philosophical, and Belles-lettres or Polite Literature. Under each division there are various sub-divisions, but of the four the last is by far the most extensive. The Chinese name for it is Chî (), meaning “Collections,” and it is of this only that the Papers which I now propose to submit to the Society lead me to give a somewhat particular account.

The origin and earlier history of the Chinese coinage have been discussed in several European works, of which the most important are, in order of date, Dr. W. Vissering's “On Chinese Currency,” Leiden, 1877; Professor S. M. Georgievsky's “Drevneishia moneti Kitaichev” (The Ancient Chinese Coins), 1889; and M. Terrien de Lacouperie's “Catalogue of Chinese Coins,” printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum, 1892.

The following is a Chinese description of the kingdom of Bengal, written at the commencement of the fifteenth century, about eighty years before the Portuguese discovered the route round the Cape of Good Hope, and about sixty years or so after Ibn Batuta had visited those regions. This account is a chapter taken from a work, bearing the Chinese title Ying-yai--shêng-lan (a general account of the shores of the ocean), compiled by one Mahuan, an Interpreter attached to the suite of Chêng Ho, who was sent to the various kingdoms of the western ocean by the Chinese Emperor Tung-lo. The object of this expedition was, that the Emperor Yung-lo feared that Hui-ti, his predecessor, whom he had driven from the throne, was concealing himself in some country over the sea; he wanted to trace him, and at the same time to display his military force in foreign countries, in order to show that China was rich and strong.

The two copper-plates from which the subjoined transcript has been made were entrusted by Dr. Burgess to Professor Bühler for publication, and he has kindly allowed me to edit them. They are now in the British Museum.

Yü of Hsia “was styled Wênming.” Yü's father was Kun, whose father was the Emperor Ch'uanbsü, whose father was Ch'angyi, whose father was Huangti; so Yü was Huangti's great - great - grandson, and Ch‘uanhsü’s grandson. Yü's great-grandfather Ch'angyi and his father Kun were both unable to sit on the Imperial throne, being simply officials. In the time of the Emperor Yao “the deluge assailed the heavens, and in its vast expanse encompassed the mountains, and overtopped the hills, so that the common people were troubled about it. Yao sought for one capable of controlling the waters. All the officials and presidents of the four mountains said, ‘Kun might do it.’ Yao said, ‘Kun is a man who disobeys orders, and ruins his companions. He will not do.’ The president of the four mountains said,” Among his equals there is no one so worthy as Kun; I wish your Majesty would “try him.” Upon which Yao, giving heed to the president of the four mountains, employed Kun to control the waters “for nine years,” but the waters did not abate, “and the work was unaccomplished.” Then the Emperor Yao sought a man in his stead, and secured Shun. Shun being employed in the public service was associated with the Son of Heaven in the administration.

In fulfilment of the undertaking given by me on p. 387 of the J.R.A.S. for 1894, I submit the text of an unpublished Sutta from the Majjhima Nikāya dealing with the ‘marvels and mysteries’ of the Buddha's nativity. Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Sutta is also given, though the absence of MSS. for collation leaves the readings in many instances far from satisfactory to me. I hope in an early number of the Journal to have an opportunity of discussing the subject-matter in the light of the Lalita Vistara and the Nidāna-kathā of the Jātaka.

In this article I do not propose to attempt any general classification of the dialects spoken in different parts of Persia; for, in the present state of our knowledge, and with the materials yet available, such attempt would, perhaps, be premature; and, in any case, the task is one which I am not competent to undertake. Neither do I deem it necessary to enlarge upon the importance of the philological results which a fuller study of these dialects may be expected to yield. My present intention is merely to make known a collection of poems, of various dates and authorship, composed in different dialects of the Persian language, and contained in a small manuscript which came into my possession about four years ago.

Mīrzā Fath 'Ali, Akhwand-Zādeh, an officer of Tartar origin in the Russian Service at Tiflis, wrote a series of comedies in the Azeri-Tūrkī dialect, and this satirical tale, about the year 1858. These compositions were translated into Persian by Mīrzā Ja'afar of Karājah Dāgh, and these translations were lithographed and published at Tehran in 1874. The volume contains six Plays—

The Wazīr of the Khān of Lankurān, in four acts.

The Thief-taking Bear, in three acts.

The Miser, in three acts.

The Court-Pleaders, in three acts.

Mūllā Ibrāhīm Khalīl, the Alchemist, in four acts.

And the Story of Yūsuf Shah, which comes between the fourth and fifth Plays, and is written partly in narrative, partly in drama form.

The remarkable divergences and alterations which a very slight difference in locality causes to exist in the tongues of the Tibeto-Burman hill-tribes have been frequently adverted to, and are, in fact, one of the stock examples of the birth and growth of dialectic change in language. In truth, it must be admitted that in no part of the world are the conditions more favourable to such growth than in the mass of mountains which extends from the Himalayas to Cape Negrais, and which forms the habitat of many of the most interesting of these tribes. Favoured by an abnormally heavy rainfall, the dense jungles which everywhere cover these hills would successfully defy the efforts of even civilized people for their destruction. As it is, except for temporary clearings for cultivation, and somewhat more permanent ones immediately round the villages, these forests remain practically intact, forming, together with the extraordinarily broken character of the ground, one of the most powerful obstacles conceivable to intercourse between the various villages. Such intercourse, therefore, except when it partakes of a raid or foray, is usually on a very limited scale; nor, as a matter of fact, was anything more extended desired by the villagers until quite recently. As McCabe says of the Nagas: “They have remained isolated on their hill-tops, only deigning to visit their immediate neighbours when a longing for their heads has become too strong to be resisted.”

It would seem at first sight as if the history of a small African island were hardly worth the trouble of editing in its original and not very stylish Arabic dress. But it was a saying of Scaliger's that omnis historia bona, and no people seem to have realized the truth of this more than the Arabs. An event once recorded simply as and because it happened, may by the advance of time be brought into new clearness and significance. Once in possession of the fact we can agree upon the fiction at our leisure. And from this point of view we have every reason to be grateful that the influence of Islam tended to narrative rather than criticism, to veracity rather than profundity. In the present instance we have a record, scanty indeed and prosaic, but one to which in the excitement of the scramble for Africa we can hardly be indifferent. It is true that the author, after a fashion not uncommon in the East, conducts us to the crisis and turning-point of his story, and then suddenly relapses into silence, but not before we have seen and recognized “the intruder on his ancient home.” The arrival of Vasco da Gama opens a new chapter of history, of which, with its complications and surprises, we have not yet come to the end.

The IAVs. closely follow the rules of the Sanskrit stress-accent (as distinct from the ancient musical accent) which have been noted by Prof. Jacobi in ZDMG. xlvii. 574 and ff. The only difference is that the IAVs. do not usually throw the accent further back than the antepenultimate if the word ends in a long syllable. The general rules are as follows:—

(1) The stress-accent falls on the penultimate if it be long. Examples—Skr. and Ts. kīrti ‘fame’; G. janōi ‘a sacrificial thread’; M. gīdh(a) ‘a vulture’; kāṇā ‘one-eyed’; S. rahāū ‘a dweller’; H. asūj'hā ‘invisible’; kisān(a) ‘a husbandman’; B. choṭákkā ‘small.’

In my former paper I endeavoured to set forth the principal events in the life of Ch'ü Yüan, the author of the Lî Sâo Poem, as they are related in the biography of him by the historian Sze-mâ Ch'ien.

On the occasion of a visit to Egypt last winter, I occupied myself in copying some of the inscriptions in the old graveyard of Assuan (Aswān, or Uswān)— as many, that is to say, as the limited time at my disposal would permit.