Students of early history are greatly indebted to Mr. Philipps for the clear and compendious form in which, in his article entitled “The Connection of St. Thomas the Apostle with India,” published in the Indian Antiquary, vol. 32, 1903, pp. 1 ff., 145 ff., he has brought together from so many works, some of them not easily accessible, even if they were known, to general readers, so much matter of importance about the Christian tradition which connects St. Thomas the Apostle with India.

I have already expressed my agreement with General Sir A. Cunningham's theory that the emperors of Kanauj were Tomaras. For the evidence, such as it is, I must refer to his Arch. Surv. Reports, vol. i, p. 132 ff. From this theory, in combination with that of Mr. Bhandarkar, it follows, of course, that the Tomaras were a clan of the Gūrjara tribe. It is curious that the Tomaras are hardly ever mentioned in older records. There are, so far as I am aware, only two old inscriptions that name them. One is the Pehewa inscription (E.I. i, 244) of the time of Mahendrapāla (c. 885–910 a.d.), and the other is the Harsha inscription (E.I. ii, 116) of the Chohan Vigraharāja, dated 973 a.d., which would fall into the reign of Vijayapāla (c. 950–975 a.d.). Vigraharāja's great – grandfather Chandana is said to have defeated or slain (hatvā) a Tomara lord (īśa and bhūpa) named Rudrena, and to have been a cause of terror (bhaya-da) to the sovereign (Kṣ itipati). Seeing that Chandana's date would coincide with that of Kshitipāla (alias Mahīpāla, c. 913–945 a.d.), it suggests itself that the term Kṣ itipati may have been chosen on purpose in allusion to Kshitipāla's name, and that the Chohan Chandana may have been one of the chiefs who gave assistance to the Rāshṭ rakūṭa Indra III in his great war with Mahīpāla.

The exact position of Sāketa, a town somewhere to the north of the Ganges between Kanauj and Pāṭali-putra, now Patnā, for long has exercised the minds of the many who take an interest in the ancient civilization of India. It was a noted place from the days of Gautama Buddha down to about 400 a.d. Several places have been suggested, but no one is supported by very convincing proof, and when closely examined in the light of the discovery of the site of Kapilavastu more than one of the proposed identifications are manifestly wide of the mark.

About sixty years ago the Rev. Dr. Stevenson, in the Journal Bombay As. Soc., vol. i, p. 148 ff., published a kind of facsimile and a translation of an inscription, a copy of which had been received from Major Wilkinson, Resident at Nāgpur in the Central Provinces. Dr. Stevenson also laid before the Bombay Society a transcript of the text in Nāgarī characters, but this has not been made public. Through the kindness of my friend Dr. Fleet I have long been in possession of excellent paper impressions of this inscription, and I have briefly referred to its contents already in Ep. Ind., vol. iv, p. 257. As the inscription, though fragmentary, contains several points of considerable interest, I now give a fuller account of it, together with the text so far as I can make it out from the materials at my disposal, and part of a translation.

Paramārtha (a.d. 499–569), or Kula-nātha as he was sometimes called, was a Brahmin of the Bhāradvāja family of Ujjayinī, West India. In 539 a.d. the Emperor of China, Wu-ti (502–549), sent a mission to Magadha, North India, in search of a learned Buddhist and the original Mahā-yāna texts. The Indian Court despatched Paramārtha, who was then staying at Magadha, with 240 bundles of palm-leaf texts, besides 64 works which he afterwards translated.

Of the flowing river the flood ever changeth, on the still pool the foam gathering, vanishing, stayeth not. Such too is the lot of men and of the dwellings of men in this world of ours. Within City-Royal, paved as it were with precious stones, the mansions and houses of high and low, rivalling in length of beam and height of tiled roof, seem builded to last for ever, yet if you search few indeed are those that can boast of their antiquity. One year a house is burnt down, the next it is rebuilded, a lordly mansion falls into ruin, and a mere cottage replaces it: The fate of the occupants is like that of their abodes. Where they lived folk are still numerous, but out of any twenty or thirty you may have known scarce two or three survive. Death in the morning, birth in the evening. Such is man's life — a fleck of foam on the surface of the pool.

‘Here be’ (or ‘here is’) this hearing (or ‘this listening to’) the sacrifice of Aūharmazd [that is to say, let him, Srōš (this listening personified), come on to this (our Sacrifice)], a sacrifice to the One wishful for our benefit (sic) (hardly ‘ of the One supplicated for our prosperity’), to the sacrifice of Aūharmazd, the Holy, who is desirous of our (prosperity) as at the first; [the meaning (is) (so I would here translate ‘mēnešnīg’);— the meaning is: ‘as I have now stood at the first thus within this sacrificial (precinct, so here be the hearing of the sacrifice now)], and at the last [so meaning, ‘ I would so complete its end’]. A person here attending is therefore this’ (meaning that every sincere attendant upon the sacrifice should assume the attitude herein above indicated).

On page 230 above, and in this Journal, 1904, p. 706, I have had occasion to refer to an inscription at Mathurā which was edited by Dr. Bühler in the Epigraphia Indica, vol. i, p. 396, No. 33, with a plate giving a reproduction of the original from an ink-impression.

Among the uncertain Arabic coins in the British Museum are two dirhams of the years 361 and 363 a.h., which are described by Professor Stanley Lane-Poole (J.R.A.S., 1876, p. 295) as bearing the name of the Caliph al-Muṭī'lillah and of the sovereign (?) The mint place on one of the coins is illegible; that on the coin of 361 a.h. was identified by Dr. O. Codrington as “Rūbār,” and his collection contains a similar but more perfect specimen ; there is also one at Paris, in the Cabinet des Médailles, struck at Rūbār ; and one was published by Tornberg in the Rev. Num. Belge, 5th series, ii, 243. He read the mint Rūbār, and the name of usru āh's ancestor as adding that there was a dinar of the same type and mint in the collection of Baron Chaudoir, and that Millies possessed a dirham which he surmised to belong to the Dailamite dynasty of Wahsūdān.

For the sake of (or as ‘belonging to’) Aūharmazd I proclaim (or ‘ I address’) that Chief, the House-chief of the House, and also that Chief, the Vīs-chief of the Vīs (the village), the Zand-chief of the Zand (the sub-province or ‘ county’), and the Dāḥyu-chief of the Province.

Isacrifice to Aūharmazd the holy lord of Aša (as the ritual Law) [whose is the ritual chieftainship in accordance with exact regularity (frārūnīh)] ; and I sacrifice to the Bountiful Immortals, the well-ruling, the well-giving.

The Mānāvuḷu - sandesaya, or in Pali Mahānāgakula - sandesa, which to-day first reaches the Western reader, is a little Pali poem of somewhat singular character. It is in the form of a poetical epistle, in the style of high kāvya. It is dated from Mahānāgakula (Mānāvuḷu), a city of Ceylon. After long and occasionally complicated panegyrics upon this city, a local Buddhist monastery, and the mahāthera Nāgasena residing in the latter, it proceeds to describe in similar strains the city of Arimaddanapura (Pugāma, the modern Pagan), the emperor Siri-Dhammarāja who bears rule therein, a monastery built by the latter near his capital, and a distinguished mahāthera named Kassapa - Saṅgha - rakkhita who dwells there. Then follows an address from Nāgasena to Kassapa, in which Nāgasena mentions that he has received a letter from Kassapa through a minister Ñāṇa, apparently containing a request. The poem here practically comes to an end. Five verses follow, containing greetings to a certain Sāriputta and an exhortation to reform the Church in Pagan as it had been reformed in Ceylon by Parākrama-bāhu; but as these verses are in part grossly corrupt, as they are singularly feeble and debased in style, and as they are ignored by the Sinhalese translator of the rest of the poem, we are justified in regarding them with suspicion. Either they are altogether spurious, or they are a rough draft which the poet never worked out. The poem is thus a mere fragment.

As a contribution towards solving the question of the origin of the inhabitants of the North - Western Frontier of British India, i.e., of Gilgit, Chitral, and Kāfiristān, I would draw attention to the fact that several legends as to the early customs of these tribes point to cannibalism having once prevailed there. The interpretation of the word Piśāca as meaning ‘an eater of raw flesh,’ ’Ωμοφ⋯γος, is well known. Some of the legends have been printed, and of these I do not propose to give more than a brief sketch, with references to the authorities. Others, hitherto unpublished, I shall give at greater length.

In his notice of the philosopher Abū Bishr, of Dair Ḳunnā, Ibn al-Ḳiftī mentions that he had a public discussion with the grammarian Abū Sa‘īd al-Ḥasan al-Sīrāfī, famous for his commentaries on Sībawaihi's grammar. This discussion is reported at length by Yāḳūt in his invaluable Mu‘jam al-udabā, on the authority of Abū Ḥayyān, from whose works Yāḳūt derives much that is interesting, though he accuses Abū Ḥayyān of habitually romancing. Abū Ḥayyān, whose full name was ‘Alī Ibn Muḥammad al-Tauḥīdī, was an eminent writer of the fourth century of Islam, of whose works only three (to the best of my knowledge) have as yet been published: his treatises on Friendship and the Sciences, printed at the Jawā‘ib press in 1301 a.h.—without the very important treatise on the lives of the two viziers Ibn al-‘Amīd and Ibn ‘Abbād, which had been promised in advertisements, but which is said to be a book that brings ill-luck; and a work lithographed in India called Muḳābasāt. A brief account of him is given by Ibn Khillikān in his life of Ibn al-‘Amīd (translated by De Slane, iii, 264) ; a lengthier one by Ṣafadī, which Mr. Amedroz has kindly copied for me, and which is given in a note; and a very lengthy one by Yāḳūt, in the fifth volume of his dictionary. An extract from one of his works, which occurs in al-Ḳiftī's dictionary, is translated into German by Dieterici (“ Philosophie der Araber,” i, 144).

“Nāgarakretāgama” is the title of a Javanese poem composed by a native bard named Prapañca, in honour of his sovereign Hayam Wuruk (1350–1389), the greatest ruler of Mājapāhit. It has recently been edited with his customary scholarship by Dr. Brandes, and its contents were shortly afterwards analyzed by Dr. Kern. Its date, in so far as can be made out from internal evidence, must be put down to about 1380. At this period the Mājapāhit empire had reached the zenith of its power, and embraced, besides most of the archipelago, several, though little better than nominal, dependencies on the southern part of the Malay Peninsula. Furthermore, friendly and trading relations had been established with a number of States on the Indo-Chinese mainland. In the course of his pæan of praise for his great sovereign, the poet gives a long enumeration of all such countries. This is where the interest of the production chiefly lies, for though it be merely a question of a list of bare toponyms, yet the simple fact of some of them being mentioned at such a date gives rise to issues, as we shall see directly, of high importance for the elucidation of the historical geography, as well as of several obscure points in the early history of the countries concerned.

For representations of the now well known Piprāwā relic-vase, reference may be made to this Journal, 1898. 579, plate, bottom; to Antiquities in the Tarai, plate 28, fig. 2, and see plate 13, fig. 1; and to Mr. Vincent Smith's Early History of India, 14, plate.

Some seventeen years ago, the Government of Mysore inaugurated a new departure in archæology, the results of which have been greatly appreciated by those who are interested in exploring the ancient history of India. They appointed Mr. B. Lewis Rice, then their Secretary and previously their Director of Public Instruction, to be Director of Archæological Researches. And they made provision for the collection and publication by him, in a series of volumes entitled Epigraphia Carnatica, of the texts, with abstract translations and historical introductions, of all the inscriptional records of their territory.

At Jaunpur, in the United Provinces of Agrah and Oudh, there are two unpublished inscriptions. One is of āham Beg, at first a page of Humāyūn, and afterwards the notorious favourite of ‘Alī Qulī ān, ān Zamān, a governor of Jaunpur during the reign of Akbar, who was killed in 974 h., when in rebellion against his sovereign, The other inscription is of āham Beg's father, named Ḥaidar.

This collection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts was handed over in 1875 by Mr. J. B. Baillie, of Leys, Inverness, to the University of Edinburgh for preservation in the Library. Colonel John Baillie (v. Dictionary of National Biography, s.v.), to whom the collection originally belonged, was a distinguished servant of the East India Company. In 1801 he was appointed professor of the Arabic and Persian languages and of Muhammadan Law in the College of Fort William, then newly founded by Viscount Wellesley. This collection of manuscripts, formed while he was in the East, shows the impress of the grammatical and legal studies which he pursued ; but it contains also some of the standard works of Arabic literature. No catalogue of the manuscripts has as yet been drawn up. The following list may serve to indicate to scholars what the collection contains. The works have not been arranged in any order of subject. The majority of the volumes have a number attached to the back, and I have simply taken them in the order of the numbers. The Persian works, of which there are quite a number, have been omitted in this list—they may perhaps be treated in a future article—and these will account for some of the omitted numbers. A good few of the numbers are, however, wanting altogether, but what this indicates, or when the numbers were attached to the volumes, I cannot say. (Cf. Note at end of article.)

The following critical study of a Persian poet who flourished in the latter half of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries of the Christian era, and who, though highly esteemed by his contemporaries, is little known in Europe, is from the pen of my accomplished friend Mírzá Muḥammad of Qazwín, a Persian scholar of rare attainments in his own and the Arabic languages, and of still rarer critical acumen, who is now engaged in preparing a critical edition, with notes, of the Chahár Maqála, which, when ready, will be published by the Trustees of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial. In the course of his work he had occasion to collect materials too extensive to be incorporated in the notes on that text, and amongst them the following study, compiled from numerous manuscript sources. This I make no excuse for presenting in English dress to the readers of the Journal, for from such careful monographs must the Literary History of Persia be ultimately built up, and at present they are, alas! all too few.