This painting is a dignified example of Mughal Court art towards the middle of the seventeenth century, when portraiture was at its zenith, and, under Court influence, very much in fashion. Bichitr (a Hindu) was one of several accomplished painters of Shah Jahan's reign. He signs himself here “Servant of the Royal Court”, and his portrait of his master, done in 1632, is at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Several other works by him were included in the celebrated Imperial Album to which “Shah Daulat” belonged. This artist, whose works generally emphasized drawing and eschewed brilliant colour, sometimes painted genre subjects and liked to fill the backgrounds of his portraits with realistic detail. Here, however, he has concentrated on a single figure, and mainly on the face, which is drawn with rare feeling and expressive skill. The Saint, who was a revered Muhammedan religious leader under three Emperors, is an impressive figure, with his white robe and brown scarf set against an almost black background. His enormous hands hold a globe inscribed in Persian, “The Key of the Victory over the two Worlds is entrusted to thy hand”; this may typify the devotion of a not unworldly ecclesiastic to the Emperor.

These two sculptures decorate the pedestal of the Koppeśvara Temple at Khedrapur, south-west of Miraj in the Deccan. Though mentioned in H. Cousens' Chāluhyan Architecture, this temple has so far hardly attracted attention, badly disfigured as it is by later restorations. In a.d. 1231 it was repaired by the Yadava king Singhanadeva. Nothing else is known about it, and the temple poses knotty problems for the art historian. Its sculptures are among the masterpieces of Mediaeval Indian art.

Mr. ST. H. STEPHAN began to study this monument but died before he had finished the work. He made the following acknowledgments:—

“I have to thank the Director of Antiquities, Cyprus, Mr. A. H. S. Megaw, and Mr. Loizos Philippou, Hon. Curator of the Paphos District Museum for information and kind permission to publish this article. My thanks are also due to Mr. P. Dikaios, Curator of the Cyprus Museum, to Miss A. Paschalidou, Keeper of the photographic records in the Department, and to the Librarian, Mr. D. Daniel.”

In Egypt there is a very curious popular instrument. The rattledrum (“Rasseltrommel” in German, “tambour aux boules fouettantes” in French) has been considered up till now to be an instrument of purely Asiatic origin. The works of C. Sachs, A. Schaeffner, and Cl. Marcel-Dubois, illustrate its distribution everywhere in Asia. It is widely spread in India, Mongolia, China, Japan, and Korea. There is also a special variety in Tibet, as mentioned by A. Schaeffner (see plate xv). Yet it has not been pointed out that the instrument also occurs in Africa. In Egypt it must be a relatively recent importation, since it was unknown to the ancient Egyptians.

One does not expect absolute fidelity of outline or intricacy of structure in any delineation to be found in the so-called industrial arts, but because of the scarcity of miniatures and other paintings and drawings in Arabic manuscripts, one has to fall back on this medium frequently for our ideas of the outline and structure of instruments of music at various periods of history. Indeed, some of our earliest iconographical specimens of instruments come from this source.

The introduction by Chaucer into his Knight's Tale of the character of Emetrius, who does not occur in any of the regular source material of the Thebaid story, has never been satisfactorily explained by Chaucerian scholars.

A hlwardt describes in his Berlin catalogue a Ṣūfī tract entitledby him kitāb al-asfār, which he attributes to the wellknown Quṭb al-Dīn al-Jīlī (d. 832/1428). Vollers, who found a second copy of the same work at Leipzig, but there entitled (as it proves, more correctly) al-isfār 'an natā'ij al-asfār, follows Ahlwardt's lead in naming al-Jīlī as the author. These facts have naturally resulted in Brockelmann including the book in the list of al-Jīlī's writings.

The date of Joseph Pitts's visit to Mecca, the first known to have been made by an Englishman, has not been satisfactorily determined hitherto. It appears from his own book that he was captured by Algerine pirates in 1678. Cruel treatment at length drove him to profess Islam. His third master took him on pilgrimage to Mecca and there gave him his freedom. Some time must have elapsed before this happened, for Pitts states: “I remain'd several Years a Slave after my Defection.” The next date he mentions is 1688, when he was at the siege of Oran.

The fifteenth-century Persian poet Ashraf has received little attention from the tadhkirah-writers. His name occurs in Aḥmad ‘Alīkhān Hāshimī's vast Makhzan al-gharā'ib, but only with a few baits from a ghazal attached to it, and no details of his life. The only tadhkirah which contains a biographical notice of him is Taqī al-Dīn Kāshī's Khulāṣat al-ash'ār wa zubdat al-afkār. In the India Office manuscript of this work the notice occupies ff. 872 verso—875 verso.

Research undertaken recently at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has resulted in the discovery of a number of fresh documents which throw light on the relations between Georgia and France in the early eighteenth century, and in particular on the journey to Versailles of Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani. The objects of this mission were to secure French intervention in favour of King Wakhtang VI of K'art'li, since 1712 detained by the Persian Shah at Isfahan, and to arrange for the dispatch of French missionaries to Western Georgia, whence the Theatines had been obliged to withdraw towards the end of the seventeenth century.

The strife over the succession of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir left a decisive mark on the later history of the Ismaili sect. The quarrel between the followers of his two rival sons, al-Musta'lī and Nizār, did not end with the defeat and death of the latter; his adherents, the Nizāris, formed a sect of their own, and the rulers of the Musta'lid branch had no enemies more bitter. The fortunes of the whole Ismaili movement might have taken a very different turn had the redoubtable Assassins made common cause with the Fatimids of Egypt, instead of seizing every opportunity to harm them.

Tibetans inhabit three major regions, Tibet proper, Khams, and A-mdo. Tibet is the region so marked on the maps; Khams is the province marked as Sikang; A-mdo does not exist as a political entity, but is divided into a number of Hsien (counties) in the north-western part of Szechwan, the south-western part of Kansu, and the area inhabited by Tibetans in Ts'inghai or Kokonor. My four years' field experience of Tibetan culture was in A-mdo on the Kansu-Ts'inghai border. My study of Tibetan folk-law, therefore, is based on conditions in A-mdo. The appended translation of “Rules of Punishment for Tibetans” (promulgated by the Manchu Imperial Court in 1733) applies mainly to Tibetans in A-mdo and secondarily to those in Tibet and Khams.

In Sir Aurel Stein's Serindia, E. Hoernle describes a palm-leaf Pothī of sixty-nine folios, marked Ch 0079 a, and found in Tun-Huang. Hoernle saw that this was a manuscript of the large Prajñāpāramitā. A consideration of the numerals led him to the inference that he had to deal with fragments of the Śatasāhasrikā (= Ś). Hoernle did not, however, compare the text of this manuscript with that of other manuscripts of the Prajñāpāramitā. Such a comparison shows that Hoernle's reading of the numerals was, in some instances, not correct, and that Ch 0079 a represents a recension of the Aṣṭādaśasāhasrikā prajñāpāramitā(= Ad).

Whatever one may say about Rabāb, Umm Nizār, Nāzik, and other poetesses, the laurel undoubtedly belongs to the uncrowned queen of modern verse, 'Ātika Wahbī al-Khazrajī.

Purandhar is a hill fort to the south-west of Poona, not far from Sāsvad. It has become famous in Indian history by the siege A.D. 1665 undertaken on behalf of the emperor Aurangzēb by mahārājā. Jai Singh I of Amber (Jaipur) which forced Śivājī to surrender to the Mughals. Its fortifications were constructed by the Bahmanīs and Nizāmshāhīs; but there are vestiges of earlier fortifications and sanctuaries, probably of the Hindu Middle Ages, in one case possibly of even earlier date.

Hodgson's Sale Catalogue for the 10th July, 1947, of books from Lord Ilchester's Library at Holland House, contained a curious manuscript which was listed as follows under item No. 60.

“Oriental MS.—75 Coloured Drawings of Native Eaces in the Far East, including the Ladrones, Moluccas, Philippines, Java, Siam, China, and elsewhere, those of China depicting Royalty, Warriors, Mandarins, etc., in gorgeous Robes, richly heightened with gold, also 88 smaller Coloured Drawings of Birds and fantastic animals (4 on a page), all within decorative borders, and a double folding Drawing of a Ship, and Natives in small craft, with about 270 pages of MS. text, sm. 4to, calf, lettered, Isla del os Ladrones (eighteenth century).”

In Malay Poisons and Charm Cures by the late Dr. J. G. Gimlette (London, 1929, pp. 79–94 and 274–280), and in Danses magiques de Kelantan, by Jeanne Cuisinier (Travaux et mémoires de l'lnstitut d'Ethnologie XXII, Paris, 1936, ch. 8), there are descriptions of a propitiary ceremony to cleanse that Malay state (pūjā něgěri) by séance, dancing, and sacrifice, conducted by a male or female shaman termed for the occasion “princess” (putrī). Who was this “princess” ? Folklore speaks of a putrī Sadong adopted by a queen of Kelantan 600 years ago and also of a putrī Sakdom.

According to ancient tradition the malady called with which the Israelites were once threatened and the Philistines were once plagued was “emerods” (E.V.), i.e. “hæmorrhoids” or “piles”, but according to modern scholars “buboes” or “plague-boils” (Hitzig). Which view is correct?

It is well known that most of the tales which make up the Divyāvadāna collection are to be found here and there in the Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. Cowell and Neil noted in the introduction to their editio princeps of 1886 that “although these (Tibetan) versions are often faulty and corrupt, yet without continual reference to them it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation of the Divyāvadāna”. Students of the Vinaya will probably agree that these editors, whose acquaintance with the Ḥdul ba seems to have been based upon English renderings of selected passages supplied by Léon Feer, here did less than justice to the skill and fidelity of the Tibetan translators and to the reliability of the Sanskrit manuscripts from which they worked. The extensive fragments of the Sanskrit text of the Vinaya published in the Gilgit Manuscript Series show on the whole a very close correspondence with their Tibetan counterparts, and a detailed comparison of about 200 pages of Cowell and Neil's text with the corresponding portions of the Ḥdul ba has satisfied me that where they diverge significantly the fault generally lies with the former.

E. W. West (born 1824, died 1905) received the Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1900. In his answer to a letter of congratulations sent to him by a fellow worker in the field of Iranian studies, L. C. Casartelli, later Bishop of Salford, he describes how he became attracted to the study of Zoroastrianism and this curriculum vitae was published in part in a French translation in Casartelli's obituary notice of West (Le Musèon, 1905). West's translations of the main works of later Zoroastrianism make difficult reading for those unacquainted with the language of the original texts, but never fail to elicit admiration on the part of modern scholars who cannot but acknowledge that West, for all his selftraining, possessed an unparalleled grasp of Pahlavi long before the reading of the script acquired some measure of certainty through the discovery of the Manichsean texts from Turfan. Still more valuable than his translations were his numerous notes on Pahlavi MSS., scattered throughout his introductions to his Pahlavi Texts and rather summarily collected in his article in the Grundriss.