Fa-hien, the Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim to India (A.D. 400), has left an interesting narrative of his travels, in a little volume known as the Fo-kwŏ-ki. This was first translated by MM. Rémusat, Klaproth, and Landresse into French (A.D. 1836). Their version, being accompanied by valuable notes, was found of great use in the study of the Buddhist Religion by those who took up the subject, after Mr. Hodgson's discovery of the Nepalese Sanskrit texts. Other translations have been produced since the time of Rémusat to the present date. The last of these versions is by Dr. J. Legge, of Oxford.

It may be at first a matter of surprise to many that an alien by nationality and religion, a Roman Catholic Frenchman, should come before this learned Society to discourse on the life and labours of a British Protestant Missionary. A few words, however, will show that there are strong reasons for my taking up some of your valuable time with an account of the good work done by our late friend.

Formerly there lived an old man, a bamboo-hewer, who hewed bamboos on the bosky hill-side, and manywise he wrought them to serve men's needs, and his name was Sanugi no Miyakko. Now one day, while plying the hatchet in a grove of bamboos, was he suddenly ware of a tall stem, whence streamed forth through the gloom a dazzling light. Much marvelling, he drew nigh to the reed, and saw that the glory proceeded from the heart thereof, and he looked again and beheld a tiny creature, a palm's breadth in stature and of rare loveliness, which stood midmost the splendour. Then he said to himself, “ Day after day, from dawn to dusk, toil I among these bamboo-reeds, and this child that abides amidst them I may surely claim as mine own.” So he put forth his hand, and took the tiny being, and carried it home, and gave it to the goodwife and her women to be nourished. And passing fair was the child, but so frail and tender that it was needful to place it in a basket to be reared. But after lighting upon this gift whilst hewing bamboos, he ceased not from his daily toil, and night after night, as he shore through the reeds and opened their internodes, came he upon one filled with grain of gold, and so, ere long, he amassed great wealth. Meanwhile the child, being duly tended, grew daily in stature, and after three months—wonderful to relate!—her stature was as that of a maiden of full years.

Corea, which was till lately the last but one of the “Forbidden Lands,” is now slowly unfolding its archæological treasures to the gaze of travellers.

In the range of philological study and research there is nothing so attractive as the discovery of certain tribes who speak a language unconnected with the languages of the peoples which surround them. In Europe we have the striking example of the Basque language on the French and Spanish frontier, and, on a larger scale, we find the descendants of the ancient conquerors of the upper part of Pannonia — the Hungarians — surrounded by German, Sláv and Latin elements, speaking the Magyar language, a language wholly isolated, whose philological position has not as yet been determined to the satisfaction of all. Such isolated peoples appear like islets on the vast ocean of Languages. Another remarkable example is the language of the Bráhúi in the north of Sindh and on the east of Balúchistan, on the north-west of British India, which is the subject of the present essay. This language is spoken in a region to which much attention has been attracted of late; it is the territory formerly known as the Khánat of Khelat. The writing of the Bráhúi is the Arabic alphabet, and the letters l and t are pronounced from the roof of the mouth with a strong emission of the breath.

It has been the almost invariable remark of certain scholars who have devoted their attention to the study of the old Tamil literature, that it seems, to judge from its actual state and form, to have had no commencement. Unlike the languages and literatures of other peoples, which pass through various stages of natural development before arriving at maturity, the high dialect of the Tamil has apparently sprung up into full-grown manhood from the very instant of its birth, like the fabled offsprings of rishis, without traversing the intermediate states of infancy and youth. The philologist has before him a language which, to borrow the words of an eminent lexicographer, is “in its poetic form more polished and exact than the Greek, and in both dialects, with its borrowed treasures, more copious than the Latin;” but of the origin and growth of which he seeks in vain to catch a glimpse through the veil of impenetrable darkness which hangs over it. If we go back to the earliest source of existing literature, we find it to be a grammatical one. In fact, the author of Tolkâppiyam, perhaps the oldest grammatical work extant, is alleged to have been the immediate disciple of the mythical Agastya, the reputed author of the Tamil language itself. Beyond Agastya all is obscurity.

Panini made gutturals precede labials; but this was because, having given to a precedence among vowels, it was natural to place gutturals in the first position among consonants ; for a is allied to k as o (or u) is allied to p, and i to t.

The annexation of New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, and the Society Islands to France ; of the Fiji Archipelago to Great Britain; of a great portion of the Solomon Islands to Germany; and the tripartite division of New Guinea and its adjacent Islands between Great Britain, Germany, and Holland, have given a startling prominence to the remote Islands at our Antipodes. We hear sad stories of Native Races, which at the time of Capt. Cook in 1770 were strong and numerous, dwindling away under the socalled European civilization of intoxicating liquors, infectious diseases, and wholesale man-stealing, the entire credit of which last attaches itself to the English Colonies of Queensland and Fiji. Already the languages of Tasmania, Chatham Island, and the Ladrones, have disappeared with the entire races who once used them. Others are rapidly proceeding in the same direction. As in North America, so in Oceania, the Bible-Translations will remain as the monument of a form of speech, which no longer floats on the lips of men. Before it is too late, I throw together a succinct account of the languages now spoken. In the course of the Session I gave a vivâ, voce address on the subject, which appeared to excite interest, and at the Congress of Orientalists held at Vienna last September, I read an address in the German language on our present knowledge of the Languages of Oceania, but gave no detail of names of languages or authorities.

The extract from the Narrative of his Travels by Ebu ‘Abdu-’llāh Muhammed of Tangier, commonly called Ibnu Baṭūṭa, an English translation of which appears below, relates to his experiences in the province of Sindh, and touches on matters of local history and geography which may interest some readers, and be thought deserving of such elucidation as may be possible. These matters are noticed in the remarks subjoined to the extract, a form of comment which I have thought preferable to the alternative of interrupting the narrative by frequent and copious footnotes.

Art hath a holy mission: 'tis to raise

The soul, through form and beauty, unto things

More lovely than the sensual thoughts and ways

Of an old world's corrupt imaginings.

In song, on canvas, or in living stone,

Art saith unto the soul: “Behold the Pure,

The True, the Beautiful, for these alone

I live, by these through unborn time endure.”

Volumes have been written about the political and financial state of Egypt, but little attention has been directed to the present condition of education in that country. Therefore the results of a personal inspection of the schools in Cairo may not be uninstructive, especially since the importance of the subject has been strongly emphasized in Lord Dufferin's celebrated despatch (Feb. 6th, Egypt, No. 6, 1883).

The French translators of the “Meadowa of Gold and Mines of Gems,” by the Arabian traveller and writer Mes ūdiyy, who composed this book in A.H. 332 (A.D. 943), refer their readers, in their general index, from the name of Zebbā'u, which they have unaccountably transliterated as “Zibba,” to “Zenobie,” though they never once use this latter name in the eighteen pages (vol. iii. pp. 181–198) of the work devoted to the history of this princess. Neither have they said one word in their notes to that part of the volume to show how Zebbā'u may be identified with Zenobia. (But see the concluding passages to this paper on p. 596.)

In the very valuable paper on “Early Buddhist Symbolism” contributed to the July issue of the Journal by Mr. Sewell, we have many interesting statements showing the possible influence of the West upon Indian symbolism. These, however, do not, to my mind, lead to the conclusion Mr. Sewell desires to establish; and, in fact, he contents himself with the assertion that the swastika is emblematic of sun-motion, that the chakra represents the sun, and that the triśula “is nothing more nor less than a conventionalized scarab—a sun-emblem.” The first two assertions seem to have been considered self-evident; but, in support of the last, several remarkable coincidences are brought together.

It has often struck me how helpless European students are when they are in search of books published in India. These books are so cheap, and their demand in Europe is so limited, that it does not pay Indian publishers to have agents for their sale here. In addition to this, students have no means of knowing what works are published in India; and even if they knew their names, that is no criterion of the value of their contents. I therefore put down the following notes regarding books which I myself have found useful in studying Hindī, in the hope that they may be acceptable to my fellowstudents.

The paper which. I formerly wrote on the Rig-Veda was merely intended to lay down the general principles which guided the ancient Arranger of that venerable collection of poems. It was my good fortune to be the first to lay before scholars the following discoveries:—

1. That the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda are arranged in the order of their diminishing length.

2. That the First Maṇḍala differs from the rest, and that it possesses a special arrangement of its own.

3. That Maṇḍalas II. to VII. are uniform in character.

4. That the hymns of the Ninth Maṇḍala are manifestly arranged according to the metre and length of the hymns.

5. That certain long hymns in the Ṛig-Veda can be resolved into short sets of verses.

6. That the Tenth Maṇḍala consists of, at least, two collections, showing a distinct mark of cleavage between the 84th and 85th hymns.

The following notes, excepting a few additions in March, 1887, were written chiefly in April, 1886, at the suggestion of my excellent friend, the much-venerated scholar Col. Henry Yule, C.B., LL.D., President of the Royal Asiatic Society, after he had received from our common friend E. Colborne Baber, of H.B.M. Consular Service in China, then at Se-ul in Corea, nine sheets of manuscript secured from Formosa. These manuscripts, written in an old Pepohwan dialect, with Roman characters of Dutch origin, and, as regards several of them, bilingual with a Chinese translation, were accompanied with a valuable note of E. C. Baber, which forms a portion of the first part of the present paper.

It is not without sincere diffidence that I venture to lay before Oriental scholars the following remarks. It is my misfortune to find myself constrained to oppose the conclusions of one who, when I first took up the question, was the most accepted authority on the subject—the late Edward Thomas. That learned and distinguished man has recorded, in commenting on some former notes of mine (in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal), that I treated the matter in so discursive a way that he was unable to catch my drift. On observing this, I wrote a fresh paper for the Royal Asiatic Society—which has been unfortunately lost—in which I strove to speak out in a manner that should leave no room for misconception. Unhappily Mr. Thomas is no more among us; and one is again in the old difficulty. A hesitating delivery of opinion, which was originally caused by deference to the justly-deserved reputation of the opposing advocate, is now, in a manner, called for by respect for the memory of the departed.

Palæography never attracted much the attention of Assyriologists, and in only a few cases have they either turned their mind to the origin, growth and development of the Cuneiform syllabary. M. Menant, who tried in his grammar to give a list as complete as possible of all the signs of various styles and epochs, has unfortunately accepted many doubtful characters, and has not distinguished the really archaic from the ornamental style. F. Lenormant, who specially studied the Babylonian syllabaries now in the British Museum, has done much to elucidate many points, but his observations bear only on a few characters, and have for principal object to ascertain the values and meanings in order to help the decipherer in reading rightly the inscriptions. He made a great step no doubt in attributing exclusively certain values of the characters to Akkadian and others to the Assyrian texts, but other works seem to have claimed his attention, and he did not follow up the subject.

When I visited Trans-Caucasia in 1882 for the purpose of collecting information regarding the Languages of the Caucasus, the result of which was published in Vol. XVII. of the Journal, I became aware of the scantiness of the Vocabularies, and I mentioned this to Mr. Peacock, the Vice-Consul of H.B.M. at Battúm, who had resided some time at Poti, and had made excursions into regions not often traversed. He was good enough to undertake the duty of collecting Vocabularies, and I forwarded to him a copy of the Standard Form of Words and Sentences prepared by the Bengal Asiatic Society. After some delay, owing to the heavy press of his official duties, and a visit to England, when I had the pleasure of seeing him, and again encouraging him on the subject, he has forwarded to me he subjoined Vocabularies, which are highly important.

Among the many useful works that have appeared under the auspices of ‘The Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland,’ none is perhaps more palpably open to criticism than the Rev. J. Reynolds' History of the Temple of Jerusalem. To judge from the translation, Mr. Reynolds had, to begin with, but a very imperfect knowledge of Arabic, and, in the second place, from the extraordinary blunders he makes, he can have put himself to no pains whatever to become acquainted, by means of plans, and the descriptions of modern travellers, with the localities of which the Arab author speaks. It is not my present purpose to re-edit and correct Mr. Reynolds' work, for the book runs to some 550 pages, large 8vo., and it may safely be asserted that there is not a single one of his pages that would not require considerable alteration, to make it a tolerably exact rendering of his author's text. Moreover, the pages of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal hardly afford room for so lengthy a work. I must therefore content myself with giving the headings of each of the seventeen chapters, and shall only translate such passages in the text as have seemed to me of most importance from an archæological or architectural point of view, and for throwing light on the vexed question of the sites of the Holy Places.