There must have been in ancient India three thousand years ago, as there are in the India of to-day, many languages and many dialects of these languages. Unfortunately, there was no Linguistic Survey and no Dr.- Grierson in those days ; and of all of these save one — the language of the earliest Aryan settlers in the north-western corner of India — we have to say, “ their memorial is perished with them.”

While I celebrate (my sacrifice) I invite (in this announcement) the Creator, Aūharmazd: [I invite Him to this Yasna sacrifice; and I will invite Him continuously on. That is to say, I would now make the beginning of it, and I (will) complete it, that is, I will perform its conclusion].

Zartūšt asked of Aūharmazd thus: O Aūharmazd, Spirit (good) and bountiful, Creator of the bodily worlds, holy, …. [this (is: hanā=aē for aēγ, that is to say, the meaning is this), that it is Aūharmazd (who is) the holy Creator, not merely ‘ the bodily worlds’ which are holy; the rest is for (ordinary) praise. Some (text) says (i.e. reads) ‘ dātār, aharūv′’ (so putting the aharūv′' of the text in unmistakeable position as applying to Aūharmazd)].

Three manifest Holy ones there are who proceed according to the word of the Āfrīn.

Numerous examples might be quoted of philosophical, or political, or religious parties who have claimed for themselves a central, or a moderate, position, far removed from the ignorances and foolishnesses of the extremists on either side. There are even cases in which the critical historian may observe that, on a fair survey of the points in dispute at the time and place in question, the claim is fairly justified. So the Buddha claimed for his view of life that it was the Middle Way between worldliness, or indifference, on the one side, and asceticism on the other. So Aristotle described the ideal virtue as the Golden Mean.

The explanation was given that the word Sakastana stands for Śakasthāna, with the use of the dental s for the palatal Ś, and with omission of the aspiration in the th (page 528). The word was thus taken to mean ‘the country of the Śakas,’ with, however, the observation that “the insertion of the “whole country of the Śakas in this list is remarkable, as “a similar case is not known” (page 530). And the deduction was made that the princes mentioned in these records, including the Mahachhatrava Rajula and his son the Chhatrava Śuḍasa, were “Śaka Satraps of Mathurā” (page 531).

The existence of an ancient Indian colony in Armenia is well known to Armenian scholars, but Indianists have paid little attention to it. We owe our knowledge of it to Zenob, a Syrian, and a native of Glak (Klag), which Mr. Ellis suggests may be the Armenian equivalent of Kerak. Zenob became an ecclesiastic in an unknown town of Cappadocia called Nystra, and was the companion of St. Gregory the Illuminator on an idol-smashing tour through Armenia, about the year 304 a.d. By St. Gregory's command he wrote an account of this expedition to his Cappadocian brethren, and in it he gives a lively account of the Illuminator's little war with the Indian idolaters of Tarôn (Darôn). Zenob's history, composed originally in Syriac, has come down to us in an Armenian version, which has suffered from revision. It has been twice translated into French, and part of it into English. Zenob's work has the charm and freshness of a contemporary narrative, and throws a good deal of light on the early history of monachism and the worship of relics. He was well acquainted with the Indians he mentions, as he was for twenty years Abbot of the Convent of the Nine Springs, founded by St. Gregory on the site of the Indian temple. The convent beacme one of the most famous in Armenia, and was popularly known from the time of Zenob as the convent of Glak.

Last year Professor Sachau, of Berlin, pointed out to me among the MSS. in the British Museum an important work of Arabic philology. The work bears the title “ Critical Observations on the Mistakes of Philologers by Abu’l-Qāsim ‘Ali ibn Ḥamza al-Baṣri ” (cf. Rieu, Supplement to Catalogue of Arabic MSS., No. 841). The British Museum MS. is a modern copy of an ancient codex in the Khedivial Library in Cairo, and is on the whole legible and accurate, though at points it is not quite reliable. Another similar copy exists at Strassburg (cf. Nöldeke, Z.D.M.G., 1886), and the Library of Count Landberg contains a third. The work includes ‘observations’ on the following eight ancient philological works:—(1) The Nawādir of Abu Ziyād al-Kilābi al-’A‘rābi; (2) the Nawādir of Abu ‘Amr ash-Shaibāni ; (3) the Kitāb an-Nabāt of Aḥmad ibn Da’ūd ad-Dīnawari; (4) the Kāmil of al-Mubarrad; (5) the Faṣīḥ of Tha‘lab ; (6) the Gharīb al-Muṣannaf of Abu Obaid Qāsim ibn Sallām; (7) the Iṣlāḥ al-Manṭiq of Ibn as-Sikkīt; (8) the Makṣur wa’1-Mamdūd of Ibn Wallād. The ‘ observations,’ though sometimes pedantic, are usually valuable from a lexicographical point of view. Abu’l-Qāsim gives many corrections of the statements of the authors on whose books he comments, and supports his contentions by quotations from the poets, which are in many instances not to be found in the lexicons or in similar works.

In 1885 Professor Heinrich Thorbecke, then of Heidelberg, published the first part of his edition of the collection of selected ancient Arabic poems (, or , or ), made, at the instance of the Caliph al-Manṣūr, for the instruction of his son, afterwards the Caliph al-Mahdī, by Abu-l-‘Abbās al-Mufaḍḍal, of the tribe of Ḍabbah (died 168). This collection, more generally known as the Mufaḍḍalīyāt, consisted, according to the Kitāb al-Fihrist (p. 68), of 128 poems, of which the published portion contains 42. In January 1890, Professor Thorbecke died, and the edition has not been carried further.

While going over Messrs. Sinclair and Ferguson's able translation of the “Travels of Pedro Teixeira,” recently (1902) published by the Hakluyt Society, I have noticed that several names of places on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula have been left unidentified. As they all are important for historical geography, I venture to hope that the following short notes on them may prove acceptable to those who take an interest in the subject.

In the discussion lately held as to how far Sanskrit was a spoken language, I drew attention to the points of resemblance which existed between the so-called ‘Dard’ languages and the language employed by Aśōka in the Shāhbāzgaṛhī inscription. During the past few months I have been examining all these languages with considerable minuteness, and hope to publish the results of my studies after a reasonable period. In the meantime I have been pressed to give further details regarding the connection between ‘Dard’ and Shāhbāzgaṛhī. I therefore submit the following list of phonetic parallels. I have taken the Shb. examples entirely from M. Senart's analysis of the Kapur di Giri inscription in the Indian Antiquary, vol. xxi (1892), pp. 8 ff. As for the ‘Dard’ examples, I intend them to be taken as preliminary to my more extended account which I hope to publish at a future date. I must therefore ask leave to make a few explanatory statements in anticipation. Miklosich and Pischel have shown reasons for assuming that these ‘Dard’ languages are modern representatives of the old Paiśācī Prākrit described by Hēma-candra. My researches have amply corroborated this suggestion, and I now call these languages, not ‘Dard’ (which is an unsuitable name), but ‘Modern Paiśācī.’ It will be noticed that I sometimes refer derivations to the Avesta, and sometimes to Sanskrit.