The Pahlavi inscription discovered in 1936 by the expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago is perhaps the most important document of the Sasanian empire. It was found at the eastern wall of the so-called “ Kaaba of Zoroaster ” which was probably a Firetemple, in front of the Achsemenian tombs at Naqšl-i-Rustam.

We owe our thanks to Professor Sprengling, of Chicago, who unhesitatingly undertook the task of publishing this very difficult inscription although previously Pahlavi was not among the numerous fields of his researches. As early as January, 1937, a preliminary transcript of the text together with a short commentary was published 1; this edition was closely followed by a further contribution of Professor Sprengling 2 which was accompanied by a photograph of the inscription, thus facilitating the participation of other scholars in the interpretation of the new monument 3; for much remains to be done.

In Khotanese Jataka-stava, of which a facsimile has now been published in Monumenta Linguarum Asiae Maioris, vol. ii, Codices Khotanenses (Levin and Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1938), I noted a text of similar title in the Tōhoku Catalogue of the Sde-dge (Derge) Bstan-ḥgyur under number 1178. After some delay through the kindness of Professor Doi I received from the Library of the Tohoku Imperial University, Sendai, five photographs, somewhat small, but for the most part clear, of this Jātaka-stava. It comprised 14 lines of printed text in Tibetan script. On examination the photographs proved to contain a Sanskrit text, with interlinear partial Tibetan gloss in smaller print, of a Jataka-stava attributed to Jnanayasas. Since I have twice already alluded to this text, in BSOS., VIII, 936, and Codices Khotanensis, xii, at a time when I had not yet seen it, it seems desirable to publish it now.

°čcingha~ “ griffe ” (pəšsō. čingha- “ aux griffes écartées ”), auquel répond pers. čäng “ griffe, serre, poing; crochet ”, suppose un radical de type I *qen-g- qui se retrouve au degré o à la base de pers. käng “ aile, bras, branche”

Le type II .qn-eg- (enregistré par Walde-Pokorny, p. 391), apparaît mdans une série de mots germaniques désignant eux aussi soit une partie du corps de forme recourbée, soit un instrument ou objet de même forme; il présente, encore comme le type I, les degrés e et o: par exemple ags. hnecca “ nuque, arrière de la tête ”, en face de v. isl. hnakki “ nuque ”, hnakkr “ ancre ”, etc.

With this article the series “Zurvanica” comes to an end. There still remain passages in the Dēnkart deserving of attention, notably in the fourth book. The author has, however, found the relevant passages in that book so obscure and so difficult that he cannot undertake to publish a translation of them for a long time yet. In the present article all passages of importance have been collected from the third book. To these have been added the celebrated Daharĩ passage in the Šikand GumāniīVazār and the conclusion of that book. The translation of certain Pahlavī terms has sometimes been a source of embarrassment.

In the following pages an attempt is made to give as comprehensive J- a list as possible, and to discuss some important features of the eras and calendars which have been or are still being used in the Muḥammadan East since the early years of Islam up to the present day, as well as of those occurring in the books of the Muslim authors. This is, however, not claimed to be complete and can by no means be considered as an exhaustive survey of all the different calendars used here and there in the Near East in Islamic times, though sometimes only for a short period or in a limited area. Many a great and famous ruler had the ambition to found an era in his own name or to reform the calendar in general use in his time. I will content myself with a simple mention of the name, or a very brief description of the eras or calendars which are sufficiently well known in all details, as well as of those concerning which we have very little information, but will try to discuss those which, in spite of the existence of ample materials relating to them, are comparatively little known or about which difference of opinions exists.

Manuscripts from the Yemen mention this sect. The following account of it is taken from works in the British Museum; possibly further details could be found in manuscripts in Berlin. It is said that these heretics are to be found in most countries. One writer declares tantalizingly that their errors are too many for him to mention them all. By their show of devotion to the family of the prophet they spread error in Islam, making men think that it was the teaching of the family. They studied their creed in their conventicles. 1 They are called ṭabī‘īya, which D. B. Macdonald translates as deistic naturalists.

They taught2 that God has forty names; they are he and he is they and they are eternal as he is. Therefore they are worse than the Christians in the proportion of forty to three. Nature is outside the power of God though living beings are within it. Such phenomena as creation, the means of livelihood (rizḳ), death, life, growth, and decrease do not come from God but are due to chajiges of bodies and the effects of natures. Therefore sickness and pain do not come from God (one account makes them come from the devil), while storms and hail are the result of chance. God has no grace, no power to give good things to men; the believer gets the means of livelihood as a reward, the unbeliever takes them by force.

The story of the Persian document which forms the subject of the present article is not devoid of romance. It was discovered in 1896 by the well-known Bosnian scholar Ṣafvet-beg R. Bašagić in the possession of a local noble, Nuri-beg Čengić of Ustikolina. This family is said to be immigrants in Bosnia; their forefathers must have come as officials of the Ottoman Empire, then received fiefs and settled in the country. The farmān in question being kept in the family archives, and evidently connected with the ancestors of the Čengić, points to the origin of the family from far-away Kurdistan.

A facsimile of the interesting document was published by Bašagić1 first accompanied by an article in Serbian, and then by a German translation of the latter. On the whole the work of the late Bosnian scholar quite satisfactorily served its immediate purpose, if we take into consideration the difficulties the author must have had, working as he was in a provincial town, wheTe-a knowledge of Persian was certainly no common attainment.

Rifā‘ahbey, for by this name is he generally known, was born at Ṭahṭā, in the province of Girgā, in 1801. His genealogy goes back to Muḥammad al-Bāḳir b. ‘Alī Zain al-‘Ābidīn b. al-Ḥasan b. Fāṭimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad. His ancestors had been well-to-do but when Rifā‘ah was born, his parents were in great pecuniary difficulties. They were apparently affected by the confiscations by Muḥammad ‘Alī of the iltzamāt during the early part of his reign. Rifā‘ah’s father was compelled to go from one place to another in order to seek hospitality. At one time the family stayed with relations at Mansẖa’at an-Nīdah, near the town of Girgā these peregrinations, the young Riā‘ah began to memorize the Ḳor’ān under the care of his father.,

From the point of view of Europeans there is no book that deals satisfactorily with Urdū, metres, and as the metres are numerous, it is difficult for a student to recognize any except the three or four commonest. They have all been taken over unaltered from Persian, and Persian took them almost unaltered from Arabic. To Europeans the rules of Urdū prosody seem arbitrary, because metres must conform to certain rules for which there seems to be no adequate reason.

For example the commonest Urdū, metre is scanned as follows: maf‘ūlu fā‘ilātu mafā‘īlu fā‘ilun. It might just as well be scanned mustaf‘ilun mafā‘ilu mustaf‘ilun fa‘al or in other ways, but we should be arbitrarily told that there are no such metres and that in fact they would be impossible.

Bekanntlich unterscheidet sich die Tamil-Malayālam-Gruppe in ihrem Lautsystem dadurch von den anderen dravidischen Sprachen in wesentlicher Weise, dass sie im Anlaut nur stimmlose Verschlusslaute, in intervokalischer Stellung und nach tönenden Lauten dagegen nur die stimmhaften Varianten derselben kennt. Weil die Aussprache eines Verschlusslautes somit durch seineStellung im Worte bestimmt ist, kann die Schrift mit einem Zeichen für die stimmlose und stimmhafte Variante beide Lautwerte wiedergeben. Nun zeigt die Tamilschrift, die aus den ersten Jahrhunderten unserer Zeitrechnung stammen muss, dieses Prinzip seit der ältesten Zeit, offenbar wurde also das Lautsystem schon zur Zeit der Einführung der Schrift von dieser eigentümlichen Regel beherrscht.

Im Anschluss an diese Auffassung hat dann Subbaya, Ind. Ant., 1909, 217 u.s.w., zuerst den Versuch gemacht, den stimmhaften Anlaut, der in alien dravidischen Sprachen ausser der Tamil-Malayālam- Gruppe sehr häufig vorkommt, zu erklären. Einige Jahre vorherhatte dagegen Sten Konow, Ling. Survey, iv, 288, den entgegengesetzten Standpunkt verteidigt, dass namlich die eigentümliche Eegel, die im Tamil den Gebrauch von stimmlosen und stimmhaften Konsonanten beherrscht, sekundär und sogar ziemlich jungen Datums sei. Auch Bloch, BSL., XXV, 12, vertritt diese Ansicht.

In in 1914 M.Bloch published an article upon the intervocalic consonants Tamil in Mémoires de la Société de IAnguistique de Paris. It was published in an English translation in the Indian Antiquary, vol. 48, p. 191. He came to the conclusion based upon a passage from Kumārila Bhatta that before the Christian era Tamil possessed voiced plosives in initial, medial, and, presumably, final position, but that during a period, say from 100 A.C. to 1200 A.c, they were unvoiced and it was only after that date that intervocalic consonants again became voiced. M. Bloch directs attention to the striking parallelism of Indo-Aryan and Dravidic languages in the treatment of consonants, especially intervocalic plosives.

His arguments have never been met even by the large school of Tamil-speaking scholars, which has never accepted them. Mr. Tuttle (Dravidian Developments, p. 9), in 1930, controverts Vinson's assumption that the sound-system of modern Tamil was in use when the anguage was first written and Dr. Sastri, in 1934 (History of Grammatical Theories in Tamil, p. 49), refutes CaldwelFs Law of the convertibility of Surds and Sonants, with the observation that Pope and Vinson state the same theory with a slight modification. Neither, surprisingly enough, refer to M. Bloch's article.

IN Marathi the word Kolī has two meanings:— (1) The name of a caste or tribe or a member of it. (2) Spider. Dr. Bloch in the etymological vocabulary appended to his book, La formation de la langue marathe, appears to identify the two meanings through the medium of a third meaning “ weaver ” found in other Neo-Indian languages; and derives them all from the Skr. Kaula, Kaulika-. Dr. Turner, in his Gujarati Phonology, also considers Kaulika- to be the Skr. form of Kolī, śudra caste.

Dr. Bloch has given the fuller account of this word and it runs as follows. His abbreviations have been expanded and a printer's error corrected: Kolī masc. fisher, watercarrier (name of caste), kind of spider; Sindhi, Korī, weaver, spider; Gujarati, Koli, Hind., Kolī, name of caste; Hemacandra, Kolī tantuvāyo jālakārakrmiś ca (93, 5); Skr. Kaula-, Kaulika-. In connection with this account one or two observations may be made. The authority for the meaning of Kolī in Marathi is presumably Molesworth. He gives an additional meaning as follows: “ also a caste or individual of it, which inhabit woods and wilds living by robbery, by killing deer, etc. ”

The following is a contribution to the study of one general philosophical problem, that of unity, by pointing out—more doxographically than historically in the Western sense—what special viewpoints towards it are preferably taken by the Indian philosophers.

As I tried to prove in my Eigenart indischen Denkens and again in my Indian and Western Philosophy, a Study in Contrast, and as a student of mine emphasized in her thesis “The Concrete Expression of Abstract Ideas ”—-Indian philosophy as a whole takes its starting point from the Concrete, and even in its later apparently abstract deductions never loses sight of the Concrete (from Latin: con-crescere, the grown-together), as continually forced upon the Indian by the environing dynamic forces of a mainly tropical nature such as India's. The concept of unity, however, is a deduction or a postulate of human reasoning, never directly to be grasped from the Concrete, from the manifold phenomena of everyday life.

So far as our manuscripts are concerned, the first half of the ninth s century yields an almost complete blank. To judge by the absence of any dated text during forty-five years, the Tibetan rulers were not favourable either to orthodox Buddhism or to any form of literary activity. At any rate, a remarkable revival took place immediately after the revolution of Chang I-ch’ao, and the number of dated documents for the second half of the century is actually larger than for any previous period of the same length. It is true that the proportion of sutras and other Buddhist texts has now shrunk considerably. In their place we find miscellaneous documents of many kinds—letters and reports, circulars and account notes, calendars and didactic treatises, mostly in a fragmentary state. The most important feature, however, is the first appearance of printing, of which there are three specimens, dating from 868, 877, and 882 respectively. The first of these is the world-famous copy of the Diamond Sutra with its well-designed frontispiece, printed from blocks in so masterly a fashion as to make it evident that the art of printing must already have been practised in China for a considerable time.