This district takes its name from Dārā [Darius] the Great, son of King Bahman ibn Isfandiyār.

Dārābjird.—This city was founded by Dārā, son of Bahman. It was built circular as though the line of circumference had been drawn with compasses. A strong fortress stood in the centre of the town, surrounded by a ditch kept full of water, and the fortress had four gates. But now the town lies all in ruins, and nought remains except the wall and the ditch. The climate here is that of the hot region, and there are date-palms. The streams of running water are of bad quality. A kind of bitumen [mūmīyā] is found [near Dārābjird] at a place up in the mountain, which bubbles up and falls drop by drop. Also there is a rock-salt found in these parts which is of seven colours where it comes to the surface of the ground.

Depuis qu'en avril 1911, a paru dans ce même journal une note sur la langue et l'écriture des anciens documents sogdiens retrouvés par M. M. A. Stein, dans une tour du vieux limes chinois, il nous a été possible d'étudier de plus près ces textes si curieux. M. M. A. Stein, d'accord avec M. Cowley, qui les avait le premier examinés, a bien voulu mettre à notre disposition les photographies des six “lettres” les mieux conservées. Celles-ci, malgré l'âge, et bien qu'elles soient toutes plus ou moins détériorées, constituent des documents précieux; ce ne sont pas le moins du monde des débris: toutes présentent, malgré leurs lacunes, des morceaux d'un seul tenant, dont la longueur est variable, il est vrai, mais qui fournissent des phrases suivies, des formes nominales et verbales variées, bref de véritables petits textes.

MS. sur papier; slanting brāhmī; 12 folios. Voir JRAS. 1911, p. 762.

On remarquera la fréquente confusion de la sonore et de la sourde gena = kena, dv = tv (xxx, 34), spantati = spandati (xxxi, 2), aṅguśena = aṅkuśena; yoniśas tvijam = yoniṣo dvijam (xxxi, 5), ja = ca (ii, 5), nipādinaḥ = nipādinaḥ (xxxi, 1), edaṃ = etān, tāvati = dhāvati (xxxi, 33), etc.

The oldest instances of the use of the word yavana, yona, in India were discussed by the late Professor Weber in his paper on the Greeks in India. He maintained that the Indians adopted this denomination of the Greeks from the Persians. He also remarked that the name was then later on transferred to the Indo-Scythian successors of the Greeks in North-Western India, and, further, to the Parthians, Persians, and Arabs. There can he no doubt that the word was in later times commonly used to denote the Musalmāns, and sometimes also, in a more general way, as synonymous with mleccha. On the other hand its original meaning was certainly ‘a Greek’. That is the case in the Aśoka inscriptions, in the Besnagar column inscription, and in some of the Nasik and Karle epigraphs. In the Nasik inscription of the nineteenth year of Siri-Pulumāyi Vāsiṭhīputa (EI, 8. 60) we find the yavanas mentioned together with sakas and palhavas, and it is just possible that the word here denotes some Indo-Scythian tribe and not exactly the Greeks. In the Junāgaḍh inscription of Rudradāman of the year 72, i.e. probably of a.d. 150, we hear of a yavana ‘king’ (rājan) Tuṣāspha, who was governor of Kāthiāvāḍ under the emperor Aśoka. The name Tuḍāspha cannot be Greek, but must be Iranian. Still he is called a yavana. This shows that in the second century a.d., the name yavana was not restricted to the Greeks.

29·8×23·7 cm.

Fols. 246, marked in Gujarati.

19 lines to a page.

Rubrics in Guj. in an upturned script.

Catchwords at the bottom of the pages on the righthand side.

No colophon, but on fol. 246 the year 804 A.Y. (=1435 A.D.) is inserted by a later hand. A short postscript in Guj. on the last page states that this Vendidād with Yasna and Visperad is 300 or 350 years old.

Since my publication of the Bharaut inscriptions the Indian Antiquary, vol. 21, p. 225 ff., Professor von Oldenburg has subjected the Bharaut sculptures to a careful examination in a Russian article which Professor Lanman has made generally accessible by an English translation in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 18, p. 183 ff. Professor von Oldenburg succeeded in tracing in the Pāli Jātaka book three of the Bharaut bas-reliefs which had not previously been identified. The references to four other jātakas could not be given in my first list, because at the time when it was drawn up vol. 6 of the Jātaka book had not yet been published. The same volume enabled me to restore conjecturally one of the Bharaut inscriptions, while repeated perusal of vol. 5 yielded explanations of two bas-reliefs which had remained unidentified.

In my paper on the Vedic Ākhyāna I referred briefly to Professor Ridgeway's theory of the origin of tragedy in Greece; the importance of the question and the light it throws on the value of comparative mythology and religion render it worth while to consider that theory in further detail.

In a recent paper in this Journal on “Chinese Writing in the Chou Dynasty in the light of Recent Discoveries”, I expressed the hope that I should be able shortly to publish in the Journal a list of the characters contained in the Chinese inscription of the Bushell Bowl, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, with their Lesser Seal equivalents, and some additional forms besides.