In Iranian Studies [I], BSOS vi (1933), 945 ff., I commented briefly`upon a text of the Bahman Yašt (Vahman yašt or yasn), in which certain ethnical names occurred. It was desired then chiefly to point out the name of the Karmīr xyōn “Red Chionitae” beside the Spēt xyōn “White Chionitae”, and the forms of the name of Sogdiana. I did not, however, succeed in interpreting the whole passage satisfactorily, and after ten years I venture once more to call attention to it. To the bibliography given in BSOS vi 9451 should add here the edition of the Bahman Yašt by Anklesaria, The Zand-î Vohûman Yasn 1919 (which came into my hands after I had written the'paper); B. N. Dhabhar, The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz, 1932, which contains on p. 465 a translation of the Parsi-Persian text to be found in M. R. Unvala's. Dârâb Hormazyâr's Rivâyat ii 91 (1932); Markwart, Provincial Cities of Eranshahr, p. 69.

[Following the study I made on some points connected with chronological matters relating to the Sasanian period, I published some short articles dealing with these points in BSOS., ix, pp. 125–139, and ZMDG., vol. 91, part 3, pp. 675–7. In 1938 and 1939 I concluded these studies with an article on the chronology of the early Sasanian rulers for publication in BSOS.in 1939. The Bulletin being already completed for Press, the publication of my article was not found possible, and therefore Professor Sten Konow, of Oslo, on the suggestion of my old friend Professor Arthur Christensen, of Copenhagen, who is himself one of the best living authorities on the history of the Sasanian period of Iran, offered to publish the article in Acta Orientalia. Accordingly I sent the copy of the article to Oslo in the closing weeks of 1939. Professor Konow, in a letter which reached me in March, 1940, asked me if, owing to some difficulty in sending and getting back printed matter by ordinary post at that time, he could read the proof of the article himself and proceed to publish it. I agreed, but my reply to this effect, though sent immediately, did not reach him owing to the cessation of postal communication between England and Norway. I have never since been able to ascertain if the article was or was not published in the Acta.

In the meantime I have been pursuing my study of this subject, and new points occurring to me from time to time, I decided some time later to revise the whole article, and the following pages are the result, which may be considered as a fully revised form of the article which was to be published in the acta.]

Isaac De Beausobre, the Huguenot author of one of the best books ever written on Manichæism (Histoire critique de Manichée et du Mani cheïsme, Amsterdam, 1734, 1739), was the one to make the only sound suggestions on the sources used by Mani for the compilation of his Book of the Giants: the Book of Enoch, and the which Kenan, a great-grandson of Noah, discovered lying in a field (vol. i, 429, n. 6). The latter work has been indentified by Alfaric (Lex Écritures Manichéennes, ii, 32) with a book whose contents are briefly indicated in the Decretum Gelasianum, p. 54, II. 298–9 (ed. Dobschütz): Liber de Ogia nomine gigante qui post diluvium cum dracone ab hereticis pugnasse perhibetur apocryphys. Of the Book of Enoch, which was composed in the Hebrew language in the second century B.C., only an Ethiopic version, a few Greek fragments, and some excerpts made by the Byzantine chronographer Georgius Syncellus survive. Mani, who could hardly read the Hebrew, must have used an Aramaic edition based directly on the Hebrew text (see below, Šhmyz'd). He quotes mainly from the first part, which Georgius S. (p. 45, EI.-R.) called “the first book of Enoch on the Egrēgoroi”, but shows himself acquainted also with the subsequent chapters.

The vague and indiscriminate use of the term Kurd goes back to early times. According to Ḥamza Iṣfahānī (circa 350/961), ed. Berlin, 151, “The Persians used to call Daylamites ‘the Kurds of Ṭabaristān’, as they used to call Arabs ‘the Kurds of Sūristān’, i.e. of 'Irāq”. Other Arab and Persian authors of the tenth century A.D. mean by Kurds any Iranian nomads of Western Persia, suth as the tent-dwellers of Fārs.

Since 1880 more than forty publications have been registered in Madras as “Saurāshtranā, the language noticed but not described under the name Paṭṇūlī in the Linguistic Survey of India, vol. vs., 2, pp. 447–8. It is spoken by more than a hundred thousand persons who play an important part in the textile industry of Madras and form a considerable element in the population of Madura and of other towns and localities in the Tamil districts. The great majority of them (89,000 out of 104,000) speak Tamil as a second language. Thurston's Castes and Tribes of South India, vol. vi (1909), gives an account of them in the article “Patnūlkārans”, and for the present purpose it is only necessary to say that according to their own tradition their original home was Surāṣṭra. In A.D. 437–8, as is recorded by a Mandasor inscription, the guild of silk-weavers who had migrated to Mandasor from Lāṭa-viṣaya erected a temple to the Sun (paṭṭavāyir udāraṃ ṥreēṇībhītair bhavanam atulaṃ kāritam), which they repaired in A.D. 473–4, the date of the inscription. It is a reasonable conjecture that they were ancestors of the present Saurāshtrans of South India. The inscription presents them as a self-contained community, in which learning and the martial arts as well as industrial skill were represented, and it may well be that Vatsabhaṭṭi, who composed the epigraphic poem, was himself a member of the ṥrēṇi. They may be supposed to have resided in Mandasor for a time. But long before the place was captured by the Muhammadans in the early fourteenth century the modern Saurāshtrans according to the tradition migrated to the Yādava capital Dēvagiri (Daulatābād). Subsequent migrations led them first to Vijayanagar, and finally into the Tamil country which is now their home. This account of their migrations is said to be preserved in a set form of words used in their marriage ceremonies. That they must have come under Telugu influence is plain from the considerable Telugu element in certain publications. The language which they brought from Lāṭa or Surāṣṭra may therefore have come successively under the influence, first and for a very long time, of Rājasthān forms of speech, and then of Marathi, Telugu and Tamil.

Original Dravidian k-is palatalized to c- in Tamil Malayalam and Telugu when follwed by the front vowelsi, ī, e, ē. This change takes place in the following words:-

Ta. citar to scatter, also citaṟ, Ma. citaruka, Te, cedaru; Ka. kedaru, kedaṟu, Tu. kedaruni; Ka. also cadaṟu, cedaṟu, Tu. also cadaruni.

The Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1936–7 contains, among other interesting matter, a report by the late Mr. N. G. Majumdar on the excavation of a large and evidently important building at Lauriya Nandangarh, which seems to date from at least the second century B.C. Among the many things found here is a square leadin coin or token with the mould in which it was cast (pp. 49 f., pl. xxiv, 2–4). This bears on one side the device of the tree in rail and on the other taurine symbol surmounted by a legend in Brāhmī script of about the first century B.C., a ya ri ta sa, which Mr. Majumdar interpreted as Aya Ritasa, Pkt. corresponding to Skt. Ārya Rtasya, and meaning “Of the Honourable Rta”. He remarks that this “does not sound like a king's name …. It is thus possible that the lead piece represents a token and not a coin. Otherwise it would be hard to explain the discovery of a coin mould in the remains of religious establishment”. He thus seems inclined to regard it as a token issued by or for some religious teacher named in Skt. Rta and in Pkt. Rita.

IL est de règie de diviser les chroniques siamoises en deux classes: 1˚ les chroniques courtes, sommaires, (, skt sanhhepa), et 2˚ les chroniques longues, développées, (, skt vistdra).

Cette classification, purement formelle en son principe, coïncide pourtant avec la classification génétique de ces textes, du moins en gros. Les chroniques longues semblent dérivées d'une recension de la fin du XVIII e siècle; au contraire, les rapports des chroniques courtes entre elles et avec la recension longue sont fort loin d'être clairs.

The dated documents belonging to this last half-century of the Stein Collection are more numerous than ever, but also for the most part scrappy and fragmentary. There are very few Buddhist canonical texts, but a considerable variety of miscellaneous prayers, eulogies, certificates, letters, contracts, calendars, inventories, and so forth. The general impression one obtains is of a period of gradually increasing poverty and political unrest, in which the civilization introduced by the Chinese is seriously threatened, and Buddhism, though still maintaining its position as the dominant religion, has greatly degenerated since the palmy days of the early T'ang dynasty.