At the conclusion of a paper dealing with the possible identity of the site of Kasiā with Veṭhadīpa, I expressed the hope that a continuation of my explorations on that site would lead to a final solution of the topographical problem. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, this hope has not been fulfilled. Last winter's excavations, however, have had the result of settling another question no less important for the ancient geography of India—that of the position of Śrāvastī.

When the various tribes of Mongols and Kalmuks were definitely converted to Lamaism in the sixteenth century it was not unnatural that the Lamaist monks, who formed their only literary class, should have tried to affiliate their famous heroes and their princely families to the old royal stock of Tibet, which had become for them a sacred land. Hence we find the two Mongol chronicles, one known as the “Altan Topchi” and the other generally quoted from the name of its author as Ssanang Setzen, and the Kalmuk legend derived by Pallas from the Tibetan work called the “Bodimer,” all concurring in a pedigree for the Mongol royal race which traces them first to the early Tibetan kings, and through them up to the alleged Indian ruler Olana Ergükdeksen, and through him again up to Sakiamuni Buddha himself. This pedigree was probably the invention of the author of the “Altan Topchi.”

The following short disquisition endeavours to show that, taking them all in all, the Chronicles of the ‘Southern’ Buddhists are, on the whole, sufficiently consistent to justify historical conclusions being deduced from their evidence. It is, of course, quite palpable that the earlier part of the Chronicles is inserted to furnish an historical prelude to the appearance of Mahinda, the principal actor in the conversion of Ceylon; but in spite of the great temptation to exaggeration and overstatement, the ancient authors of the Chronicles have done their work conscientiously, if not critically. Putting aside the mythological elements, which are always easily detected and may be as easily discounted, it may be said that in matters of historical detail they are surprisingly accurate, and have shown a power of restraint which does them credit when we compare their sober statements with the hyperbolic annals of the Puranic school of mythologizing historians.

This paper explains how the nations and tribes of India were arrayed in the great war of the Pāṇḍavas against the Kauravas, and the annexed map illustrates the position by exhibiting the names of the countries and peoples in different colours, those supporting the Pāṇḍavas being printed in blue ink, and the Kauravas and their allies in red, while those which were neutral and all collateral details are printed in black ink. It has been prepared at Dr. Grierson's suggestion in order to ascertain whether the division has any ethnographical significance with reference to his researches into the languages of India.

The great mass of Hindūs of the present day follow, and for nearly five centuries have followed, the religious doctrine of salvation by bhakti, or loving faith. This, although nominally based on the Vēdas and Upaniṣads, is strongly opposed both to the advaita Vedantist doctrine of salvation by knowledge and to the Mīmāṃsā doctrine of salvation by works. Its very idea of salvation, a life of never-ending bliss near the Holy One, is radically different from that offered by these two schools.

The coins which are dealt with in the present paper fall under three divisions. First, the coins of the Early Licchavi Sūryavaṁśī dynasty, whose capital was at Mānagṛha, the present Kāṭhmāṇḍū, and those of the Ṭhākurī dynasty who were ruling at the same time over the western portion of Nepal, with their palace at Kailāśa-kūṬabhavana, situated in another part of the same city. Second, the coins of the three Newār Malla dynasties, who reigned contemporaneously over the three kingdoms of Bhātgāon, KāṬhmāṇḍū, and Pātan, or Lalitāpur.

The Jámi‘u’t-Tawáríkh is unquestionably one of the most important historical works in the Persian language, not only by reason of the singularly full and authentic account of the history and antiquities of the Mongols for which it is chiefly celebrated, but also by virtue of the general history, especially the history of the independent or semi-independent post-Muhammadan dynasties which held sway in Persia immediately before the rise of the Mongol dominion (i.e. between the ninth or tenth and the thirteenth centuries of the Christian era), wherewith the author, Rashídu'd-Dín Faḍlu'lláh, or ‘Rashíd the physician’ as he sometimes calls himself, supplemented his original work.

Few studies in ancient cosmology can more entertain or instruct the investigator of to-day than a careful comparison of the seven diagrams published as correct pictures of the Babylonian universe in the works named below. No two of the seven agree. Moreover, the first represents the Zodiac as at a vast distance above the sphere of the fixed stars, a proceeding which at the start disarranges all ordinary astronomic ideas. Equally unpicturable in my imagination is the seventh of the series, the world sketched by Radau. Again and again have I tried to construct it in thought, but every time have failed. Even Jensen in his great work gives us for “the place of the Convocation of the Gods” (Du-azag), only a pitch-dark cavern in the thin crust of his sea-filled hemispherical earth, and has no place for Hades but another cavern located in the same thin crust and oddly enough far above the cave of the gods. Surely there is a call for new attempts to think the thoughts of these ancient Semites after them.

To those (Supreme Persons) do I sacrifice; to them do I come on for friendly aid, who are the Amešaspentas, who rule aright, who establish (all things) well; (2) and to that Chief would I take up (or ‘celebrate’ my song), to that God and ritual Chief do I sacrifice who is Auharmazd, (3) the Creator, the Rejoicer, the Producer of every benefit. (4) And I sacrifice to the Chief who is Zartušt, the Spitāmān.

A Portion of a Hittite cuneiform tablet from Boghaz Keui has come into my possession, which is shown by its contents to belong to the same tablet as that of which I have published another portion in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1907 (pp. 919, 920). The original tablet must have been a very large one, and probably contained a complete list of the oiferings to be made to the various deities in the Hittite pantheon. It thus resembled the great inscription of Meher Kapussi, near Van, in which we find a similar list of the offerings to be made to the Vannic gods (J.R.A.S., New Ser., xiv, 3 (1882), pp. 461 sqq.). As I have already stated in the Journal for last April, p. 548, the new fragment enables me to correct some of the readings in my copy of the first fragment.

Now that the complete text of the Śāṅkhāyana Āraṇyaka will shortly be available, it may be of interest to give a brief account of that comparatively little-known work, and in particular of the part hitherto unpublished, on the basis of the excellent and old manuscript of the text in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Frašoštar, the holy, asked of Zartūšt, the saint: give me the answer, (O thou) foremost Zartūšt (most pre-eminent in authority and initiative), [that is to say, before this Dēn, O Zartūšt, thou didst come:—

(2) Which is the full recital of the liturgies ? which is the summarised-celebration of the Gāθas ? (3) Thereupon said Zartūšt: to Aūharmazd, the Holy Chief of A(r)ša (as the Ritual), do I sacrifice.

C'est à l'ingénieuse patience d'un ami désintéressé que je dois de pouvoir présenter ici une transcription complète de ces fragments; les notes aussi, dans l'ensemble, lui appartiennent.

Le premier morceau (A), quatre feuillets numérotés 26–29, met en scène les Bouddhas de tout le cosmos, avec leurs Bodhisattvas et leurs Śrāvakas. Ces saints personnages vont se rendre dans notre univers (Sahā) où Śākyamuni leur révélera la dhāraṇī Dharmahṛdayasamucchrayavidhvaṁsaṇī. “Ne craignez pas de ne pas trouver place dans la Sahā”, expliquent les Bouddhas à leurs auditeurs, “car Sākyamuni possēde le pouvoir de faire tenir sur un grain de poussière tout l'élément ‘terre’ de tous les univers”, etc. Nous ne sommes pas, que je sache, renseignés ailleurs sur ce pouvoir magique de praveśa.

During the disturbed period in the first half of the twelfth century, when the break up of the monarchy was followed in quick succession by the establishment of the kingdom first in and afterwards in the plains of Northern India, by the invasion of the Shāh of , and finally by the overwhelming and devastating irruption of the under Chingiz the route into India by the Kuṛam Valley and Banū played a very important part, and its possession was eagerly sought after. Thus, when Mu‘izzu’d-dīn Muḥammad bīn Sām had laid the foundations of an Indian Empire, he placed his most faithful Turk servant Tāju'd-dīn Yalduz in charge of the province of Kuṛamān and Shaṅkurān, i.e. the Kuṛam Valley and Shalozān, as we are informed in the Nāṣirī, and halted there every year on his expeditions into India. After his death the successor to the sovereignty, Maḥmūd son of Muḥammad bin Sām (generally known as Maḥmūd bin Muḥammad) confirmed Yalduz in his dignities, and made him of .

The fact of the Caraka Saṁhitā, or the Medical Compendium of Charaka, being a composite work is well known at the present day. The work is the joint production of two medical men, Charaka and Dṛiḍhabala, both natives of Kashmir, and living in that country, probably one in the second, the other in the eighth century of our era. Charaka's share itself claims to be no more than an edition of an earlier work by Agniveśa. This man, being one of the traditional six disciples of Punarvasu, called Ātreya or son of Atri, is said to have reduced to writing the oral teachings of his master, an event which must have occurred at some time in the sixth century before our era. Charaka's edition of Agniveśa's work bears the name of Saṁhitā, or Compendium, while the earlier work of Agniveśa is called a Tantra, or treatise or textbook.

Kanauj, the most famous of Indian cities during the period extending from the early years of the seventh to the close of the twelfth century, undoubtedly was founded in very ancient times, but when, how, or by whom it is impossible to ascertain. The city is mentioned not only in both the great epics, the existing texts of which date from many different ages, but also in the Mahābhāshya of Patañjali, which is known to have been written in or about 150 B.C. Its foundation, therefore, must be anterior to 200 B.C., but nothing more definite can be said on the subject.

The illustration A. at page 58 below shews a coin of Huvishka, the reverse of which has been presented by Thomas in this Journal, 1877. 212, plate, fig. 7; by Gardner in his Catalogue of the Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India, plate 28, fig. 7; and by Cunningham in his Coins of the Kushāns, plate 22, fig. 17. For the casts from which I illustrate this coin and two others which have to be noticed along with it, I am indebted to Mr. Allan, of the British Museum.

The annexed catalogue relates to a collection acquired by the India Office Library from the late Professor Aufrecht in the year 1904. The collection consists, as will be seen, partly of Sanskrit MSS., in most cases copied by Professor Aufrecht himself from originals in Europe or India, but including a few copies made, or procured from India, by friends (e.g., Professor Kuhn, Professor Bühler, Professor Kielhorn, and Dr. Stein) or otherwise obtained, and a few originals acquired by gift or purchase; partly of glossaries or word-indices; partly of pratīka-indices, i.e., arrangements of initial words, of verses, mantras, or sütras. In several cases we have the full apparatus of MS., glossary, and pratīka-index to the same work. Many of the MSS. are equipped with collations, and miscellaneous notes are appended to a large proportion of them. We may take account also of a few specialities, such as materials for an edition of the Damayantīkāvya or Nalacampū (No. 53).

Huge miscellaneous collections of anecdotes, compiled on no very apparent method, were much to Moslem taste. One of these is the of Ibn Ḥamdūn, a large anthological work divided into fifty Bāb, the headings of which foreshadow imperfectly their contents. The author's life is given by Ibn (de SI. Eng., iii, 90) and by Brockelmann (Gesch. Arab. Lit., i, 280). There is also a notice of him in the Wafi bil-Wafayāt of al-Ṣafadi (Paris, Ar. 5860, 236a), where he is described as a man of culture and of good birth, and as the composer of the on “Adab, Nawādir and a work of large dimensions, extending to twelve volumes, and very well known. Further, that the author was intimate with the Caliph Mustanjid and often conversed with him; that he owed to him his appointment to the Dīwān al-Zimām, his first official post having been that of ‘Āriḍ to the troops, under Muqtafi; and that he was amiable in character and socially pleasant. Certain stories, however, in his work being deemed by the Caliph to be reflections on his government, he was arrested in his office and imprisoned until his death in 572 A.H. In the same MS., at fol. 236b, is a notice of his brother, also named Muḥammad, but with the ‘laqab’ of Abu Naṣr (that of the former being Abu-1-Ma‘āli); that he served as clerk in the Dīwān from the year 513 A.H. until his death in 545 A.H.; and that he composed a volume of “Rasā'il” and a history.

A Peculiar fate seems to be hanging over the Samaritan literature. Although it is very old, and parts of it go back to centuries before the Christian era, yet one may say that it remained unknown to our very days. It was a continued discovery, one book after the other turning up haphazard, the first discovery dating only from the end of the sixteenth century. Since Scaliger came in contact with the Samaritan community in Cairo, the knowledge of Samaritans and Samaritan literature began to penetrate into Europe.