The Persian poem of Wis and Ramîn, by Fahraldin Asád Al Astarabadi Al Fakhri Al Gurgani, was published at Calcutta in 1864–65 by Captain W. Nassau Lees, LL.D.; an exhaustive account of it, by K. H. Graf, will be found on pp. 375–433 of vol. xxiii of Zeitschrift d. Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1869.

The description of Kurdistān given by Mustawfi (which Ḥājji Khalfah has copied almost verbatim into his Jihān Numā) presents a number of small problems which I find myself unable satisfactorily to solve. Kurdistān, or the Land of the Kurds, is not mentioned by the earlier Arab geographers, and it appears to have been first erected into a separate government under the Saljūḳs, who, in the time of Sulaymān Shah, divided it off from the rest of the Jibāl Province, which they called Persian ‘Irāḳ, as explained in Chapter 2. Sulaymān Shāh, under whose rule Kurdistān appears to have flourished greatly, surnamed Abūh (or Ayūh) was the nephew of Sultan Sinjar, who had appointed him governor of this province, and Sulaymān Shāh at a later date—that is, from 554 to 556 (1159 to 1161 a.d.)—became for a short time the Saljūḳ Sultan of the Two ‘Irāḳs, and chief of his house.

In the year 1889 the late Mr. H. H. Dhruva published an edition of the Mugdhāvabodhamauktika, which he described as “a Grammar for Beginners of the Gujerati Language”. He cannot have given much study to the work, for a perusal of it will show that it is not a Gujarātī Grammar at all. It is a very elementary Sanskrit Grammar, with the explanations written in an old form of Gujarātī. The date of the work is a.d. 1394, and all that is known of the author is that he was the pupil of Deva-sundara. His name is not given. As a Sanskrit Grammar the Mugdhāvabodhamauktika is of very small value. It deals more with what we should call syntax than with the formation of words. But, as the explanations are written in the vernacular, these incidentally afford information as to what was the condition of the language of Gujarat between the time of Hema-candra (fl. 1150 a.d.) and the time of Narsingh Mehṭā (fl. 1450 a.d.), with whom Gujarātī literature is commonly said to commence. I have therefore examined the text with some minuteness, and lay the results before the Royal Asiatic Society, as providing a valuable connecting link between the Gaurjara Apabhraṁśa of the Prakrit grammarian and modern Gujarātī. The close connection of this Old Gujarātī with the former is remarkable; and, though the materials are very incomplete, we are entitled to say that for the first time we have before us an unbroken chain of development between a Prakrit dialect and a modern Indian vernacular.

I would beg to be allowed to correct the somewhat misleading description of MS. No. 29 of the Maxwell Bequest of Malay Books which was published in my provisional list of them printed in Part I of the Society's Journal for 1899. I was misled by the first few pages of the book, which consist of a rather elaborate list of languages, into supposing that the MS. contained vocabularies of all of them: having identified a few, I assumed, somewhat too hastily, that the rest were also represented there.

In the pages of this Journal I have repeatedly had occasion to insist, especially in my notice of M. Blochet's most useful Catalogue (J.R.A.S. for 1901, pp. 331–3), on the unique value of the magnificent collection of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish MSS. formed by the late M. Charles Schefer, and now belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale. During a fortnight spent in Paris in the Easter vacation of 1901, I was able to examine more closely some of the most interesting MSS. comprised in this collection, and in particular the MS. which forms the subject of this notice, which is remarkable alike for its age (it is dated the beginning of Ramaḍán, A.H. 635 = April, A.D. 1238); its fine, clear, careful script; the interest and authority of its contents; and the fact that it is, so far as I have been able to ascertain, unique.

The collection of Sanskrit MSS. described below forms part of the library of the late Professor Fr. Max Müller, which was acquired in July, 1901, for the Japanese University of Tokiyo. It consists of 82 codices, of which 15 are tracings and 26 are transcripts of MSS. chiefly in the Berlin Royal Library, the Munich University Library, the Paris National Library, the India Office Library, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The remaining 41 MSS. were received from India through the agency of the late Dr. J. R. Ballantyne, of the Benares Sanskrit College, Professor Gr. Bühler, and Dr. FitzEdward Hall. All these MSS. represent Vedic works, chiefly connected with the Ṛgveda, and have been more or less used in the preparation of Professor Max Müller's edition of the Ṛgveda-saṁhitā with Sāyaṇa's Commentary.

For convenience of reference, the following list of MSS. which have existed or do exist is reproduced from the J.R.A.S., July, 1900:—

I. Bābar's autograph MS.

II. Khwāja Kilān's MS.

III. (Humāyūn's transcript.)

IV. Elphinstone MS.

V. British Museum MS.

VI. India Office MS. (Bib. Leydeniana).

VII. Asiatic Society of Bengal MS.

VIII. Mysore MS. (Tīpū's).

IX. Bibliotheca Lindesiana MS.

X. Hyderābād MS.

XI. St. Petersburg University Library MS.

XII. St. Petersburg Foreign Office MS.

XIII. St. Petersburg Asiatic Museum MS. (Senkovskī).

XIV. Bukhārā MS.

XV. Nazar Bay Turkestānī MS.