“In the beginning was the Word” is a truth the sublimity of which grows upon us the more we ponder it. And, indeed, the common consciousness of mankind has ascribed to the Logos the supreme act of Creation. Alike in India, China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, the world is said to exist as the audible thought of the Deity. Moreover, the creative power of the divine Voice is intimately associated with the possession of the sacred Name.

By way of a preliminary to some further remarks on the inscription on the Piprāhavā relic-vase, which I shall present when a facsimile of the record can be given with them, I offer a study of an interesting side-issue, the tradition regarding the corporeal relics of Buddha.

In the Vedas and the earlier medical works there occur some anatomical terms which have never, or at least not usually, been correctly understood, but which, on reference to the actual human skeleton, can, with much probability, be identified.

In his interesting paper on “The Nāgarakretāgama List of Countries on the Indo-Chinese Mainland,” Colonel Gerini objects, reasonably enough, to the claim set up by the Javanese author of the Nāgara Krĕtāgama that the states of Kĕdah, Kĕlantan, Trĕngganu, and Pahang in the Malay Peninsula and the island of Singapore at the south of it were dependencies of the Javanese empire of Majapahit. This alleged Javanese supremacy over the Peninsula cannot, in view of the known facts of Malay history, have been much more than a mere pretension, never substantiated by any real effective occupation. The claim was no doubt made under the influence of the stirring events which in or about the year 1377 a.d. culminated in a great, though transient, expansion of the Javanese sway. Palembang, Jambi, Pasei, and Samudra (in Sumatra), Ujong Tanah (the “Land's End” of the Malay Peninsula, now known as Johor), Bangka, Bĕlitung, Riau, Lingga, Bentan, and a number of other small islands in this region, as well as certain points on the coast of Borneo and other places to the eastward, are in the Pasei Chronicle recorded as having been conquered by Majapahit at this period or as being tributary to it about this time.

That the collection of textile fabrics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is not generally so well known as it deserves to be, is doubtless due largely to the unfavourable conditions under which, owing to want of space, it has now to be exhibited. It is satisfactory to think that this will before long be remedied, for the collection is a remarkably good one. Taken all round, it is probably not surpassed by any other of the kind.

These talismans represent the later and more elaborate magic which can be traced to the influence of the Cabala, a theosophical work embodying the Gnostic traditions of past ages. The ideas contained in them are chiefly to be found in the “ Sepher Yetzirah,” or “ Book of Formation,” which is held by some authorities to be the oldest philosophical treatise to be found in the Hebrew language. The same authority tells us it is referred to by both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, and therefore this work or a similar predecessor is at least as old as a.d. 200.

One of the more interesting features of the Great Vehicle, or Mahāyāna School of Buddhism, is the system of the Three Bodies. Being at first a ‘ Buddhology,’ a speculative doctrine of the Buddhahood, this system was afterwards made to cover the whole field of dogmatic, of ontology, and was in particular substituted for the antiquated ‘ dependent origination’ (pratītyasamutpāda). At first the Buddhas alone had three ‘ Bodies’ ; afterwards the whole universe was looked upon as residing in or made of the Bodies. Later, or by parallel development, new mythological, mystic, and physiological reveries caused serious alterations of the primitive ‘ trinitarian’ form, and in particular the addition of two more Bodies to the ‘ classical’ ones ; and the Tantric school, in its own fanciful, mystic, and theurgic way, reduced the speculative system to a mere practical method of Yoga.

In the seventh pillar-edict of Aśōka, inscribed on the so-called Delhi-Siwālik column, there is a passage which runs as follows: see IA, 13. 310, text lines 2, 3, and facsimile; and EI, 2. 270, text:—

Dēvānaṁpiyē Piyadasi lājā hēvaṁ āhā magēsu pi mē nigōhāni lōpāpitāni chhāy-ōpagāni hōsaṁti pasu-munisānaṁ aṁbāvaḍikyā lōpāpitā aḍhakōsikyāni pi mē udupānāni khānāpāpitāni niṁisiḍhiyā cha kālāpitā āpānāni mē bahukāni tata-tata kālāpitāni paṭībhōgāyē pasu-munisānaṁ.

Some remarks made in the Journal des Savants, 1905. 540 ff., by our valued friend and collaborator M. Sylvain Lévi, have given me a clue which enables me to now carry to a final result that which I have to say about the inscription on the steatite or soap-stone Piprāwā relic-vase,—the oldest known Indian record. He has drawn attention to a statement by Hiuen Tsiang (see page 166 below), overlooked by me, which has led me to weigh the wording of the inscription in such a manner that no doubt whatsoever remains as to the real meaning of it, and as to the circumstances connected with it.

The religion of Buddha was introduced into Java as early as the beginning of the fifth century a.d. Fāh-Hiān, who resided in that country from a.d. 412 to 414, says that it then existed, though only in embryo—it was not much known—“ various forms of error and Brahmanism are flourishing.” The well-known inscription at Menangkābu in Sumatra, which is dated in a.d. 656, relates that a Buddhist sovereign, whose name is pure Sanskṛit, “ Mahārājādhirāja Ādityadharma,” had previously to that date erected in Java a great seven-storied vihāra. So it may be assumed that, during the 250 years following the date of Fāh-Hiān, Buddhism, i.e. the Buddhism then prevalent in India and greatly altered from its original form, had firmly established itself as the religion of the Javanese. This seven-storied vihāra is generally supposed to be Boro-Būdūr; and certainly the architecturẹ of that great monument appears to be of that age, the general scheme of the four great terraces being very similar to that of the early Pallava-Choḷa temples about and in Kāñchī, as well as of the great Rath at Mahāvalipura in Southern India, which was carved out of the rock at the beginning of the seventh century. But in the opinion of the late Dr. Brandes, of the Archæological Survey of Java, the period of the building lies between Śaka 700 and 850 (a.d. 778–928).

The earliest references to the Śakas have been so often discussed that it would seem scarcely worth while to seek for further information in them (see Rawlinson's Herodotus, 1880, iv, pp. 200 sqq.). But the passages in Herodotus and the inscriptions of Darius have suggested to me a doubt which I should like to submit for consideration.