The recent annexation of Upper Burmah will probably give an impulse to the study of Buddhism. At any rate, the fact that the sacred books of the Southern Buddhists are beingmade accessible through Professor Oldenberg's edition of the Vinaya-piṭaka,—through the works of Professor Rhys Davids and other scholars,—and more especially through the valuable publications of the Pāli Text Society, is likely, I hope, to cause a considerable accession to the ranks of Pāli scholars.

The Buddhist legend of Jîmûtavâhana is related twice in the Kathâ Sarit Sâgara, in the 22nd Tarânga, from which the following translation is made, as well as in the 90th Tarânga. The two versions of the legend differ somewhat in their treatment of the story, the latter version giving a fuller account of Jîmûtavâhana's courtship and home-life, at the same time omitting all account of his actions in a former birth, and their results. The legend has also been dramatised in the Nâgânanda, or Joy of the Snake World, a highly sensational drama, remarkable as being the only known existing drama commencing with an invocation to Buddha. The drama follows the lines of the legend as laid down in Tarânga 90.

The task to which I address myself in this paper is the geographical distribution of the Túrki languages. But before doing so it might be well to glance at the whole Ugro-Altaïc family, in order to determine the position of the Túrki Branch in this great division of the languages of the human race.

Broadly speaking, but with sufficient accuracy, the Ugro-Altaïc languages are spoken over a region extending through more than 100 degrees of longitude, from the shores of the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China and the plateau of Tibet, and through 35 degrees of latitude, from the frozen steppes of Samoyéd and Yakút to the plains of Northern Persia and the head-waters of the Indus.

But a few Persians have devoted so much time, energy, and real enthusiasm to their own literature during the present century as the subject of this notice: the Amíru-sh-Shu'ará Rizâ Kulî Khán B Muhammad Hádí Khan B Ism'aíl Kamál, poetically surnamed “Hidáiyat,” and popularly known as the “Lalah Báshi.” Descended in a direct line from the well-known poet, Kamál Khojandí—a cotemporary of Háfiz, who died at Tabríz in A.H. 792 (A.D. 1389)— the Amíru-sh-Shu'ará was born in Tehrán on the loth Muharram, A.H. 1215 (8th June, 1800). His family, in honour of their ancestor, appended the surname Kamál to their individual appellations. Hidáiyat's grandfather, Ism'aíl Kamal, suffered death at the hands of Zakí Khán Zand for refusing to take up the cause of the Zand dynasty in preference to that of the Pretender Aghá Muhammad Khán Kajár.

Encouraged by the reception of my former paper on Bihārī Folk-Songs, I now lay before the Society a further set of similar ones, in the same dialect of the Bihārī language,— the Bhoj'pūrī.

Dr. Carlyle's book, “Specimens of Arabic Poetry,” may be somewhat scarce, and Captain, now Sir R., Burton's “Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah” gives only an English version, without the Arabic text, of the little piece of poetry attributed to Meysūn, the mother of the second Damascus Caliph of the house of ‘Umeyya, Yezīd son of Mu'āwiya son of’ Ebū-Sufyān Ṣakhr son of Ḥarb, etc.