When this paper was first presented to the Council in July last, I objected to its being received, inasmuch as it contained a vast amount of irrelevant matter, and personalities, which I should regret to see introduced into any discussion in this Society. Since then Mr. Grote, in the exercise of a discretion given him by the author, has cut it down to about one-half its original length, and now presents it in a form to which I personally can have no possible objection. I would only, however, like to observe, that the title now given to it is a little misleading. It would hardly be worth while, if an attempt to fix their dates were all the paper contained, to print a disquisition on the age of the Caves at Ajantá by a person who has never visited them, and who, though eminent as a Sanskrit scholar, has hitherto shown no aptitude for, or knowledge of, archaeological subjects.

The following article was originally suggested by a notice in Beal's “Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.” The sūtra is there selected as a type of the latest phase of Buddhist literature, not only on account of its own peculiarities, but owing to its religious importance among the Chinese, which caused the imperial rescript for its translation and general promulgation, of which an English version is there given. The two parts of which this sūtra is composed are mentioned as Nos. 15 and 16 of vol. 14 of the Tibetan “Gyut,” by Csoma Körösi in As. Res. xx. p. 529; the names of the translators fix its date as earlier than the ninth century.

Six miles beyond the first stage from Teherán, on the road to Hamadán, are the ruins of a stone caravánseráï and of two wells. The caravánseráï is called sangi ‘the stone one.’ It appears to have been one of the many caravánseráïs built in the sixth century by Anúshírván the Just. Ruins of a caravánseráï, exactly like this one, are to be seen at Ahúán, a stage beyond Semnán on the high road to Meshed, and there the legend says that it was one of Anásishírván's constructions. The distribution of the rooms and stables in these two old caravánseráïs is very different from that of the more modern ones.

In a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society in the spring of 1877, and printed in the tenth volume, new series (p. 344), of its Journal, a suggestion was made that the natural phenomenon known to Muslims of every clime as the “False Dawn” was no other than what is known in Europe by the name of “The Zodiacal Light.”

Through the liberality of the Society's rule by which a certain number of copies are furnished to the writers of papers printed in its Journal, this subject was brought to the notice of several of our most talented astronomers, in the hope that they might adopt a method of authoritatively settling the question, which is not only interesting to Orientalists as one of lexicology, but also to the astronomical world as involving a point in the archæology of their special science.