The Spanish priest Fra Sebastian Manrique, who visited Agra thirty-five years after Akbar′s death, recorded that Akbar′s Library, consisting of books written mostly by “very ancient and serious authors”numbered twenty-four thousand. Many of these must have been illuminated and illustrated ;nearly all, like most of the frescoes with which the Emperor caused his artists to adorn his palaces at Lahore and at Fathpur Sikri, have now perished. Ivan Stchoukine in his careful study of Indian miniature painting, surveying the principal illustrated manuscripts of the reign, enumerates only fourteen, though his list might have been rather larger. It would, had Stchoukine known of it, certainly have included the manuscript with which this note is concerned, for Mr. Chester Beatty′s Jog-Bāshisht is unquestionably one of the leading documents of the book art of the formative period of Mughal painting, and deserves to rank with two other celebrated manuscripts, both in this country, of the latter part of Akbar′s reign, the Bahāristān belonging to the Bodleian Library, and Mr. Dyson Perrins′s Khamsa of Nizāmī.

Much of the economic and colonial history of England can be written in terms of the changing membership of the House of Commons;and much of the early history of the British in Asia in particular can be fully understood only in relation to the rise and fall of competing parties at the India House in Leadenhall Street. The following brief glimpse into Indian politics in London in the period of Olive′s sojourn in England between his first and second governorships of Bengal illustrates the force and truth of these generalizations.

While Burmese nature poems are numerous enough in all periods of W literature to fill a sizable anthology, interest in the life of countrypeople–w their work and diversions–does not seem to have been manifested till the first half of the eighteenth century, when Padethayaza wrote his idylls, one of which we give here as No. I.

These notes are based on the pronunciation of Mr. Lai Mama, of the Baptist Mission at Lungleh, whose recent presence in London afforded an opportunity, rare in this country, of studying Lushai at first hand. The investigation was short and incomplete, but sufficient phonetic data were collected to enable certain principles governing the structure of the monosyllable in isolation to be stated.

It is many years since at an Oriental Congress in Paris Dr. C. O. Blagden started the comparative study of the genealogy of the Malay rulers of medieval Malacca, comparing the account in the then best known version of the Sejarah Melayuor “ Malay Annals ” with the list of rulers recorded in Chinese sources (Essays Relating to Indochina, 2nd series, vol. 1, Notes on Malay Archipelago and Malacca, W. P. Groeneveldt) and in d′Albuquerque′s Commentaries (Hakluyt Soc, 1927). Since Dr. Blagden wrote his paper, there have been pubKshed under my name two other Malay sources for the genealogy of the Malacca dynasty: a chapter from a MS. of the Bustan al-Salatin by Shaikh Nur al-din (JRAS., Straits Branch, 1920, No. 81, pp. 39–47) and an earlier version of the “ Malay Annals ” (JRAS., Malayan Branch, 1938, No. 16). There is also new material in the Suma Orientalis of Tomé Pires (Hakluyt Soc., 1944, vol. ii, pp. 229–259). And there is a valuable paper on the Founder of Malacca by P. V. van Stein Callenfels (JRASMB., 1937, pt. ii, pp. 160–6).

“He was not of course a critical historian: in his materials fact was mixed with myth and folklore in varying proportions and he was not competent to sift them…. His forte is vivid and picturesque description, the lively presentation of scenes and actions, characters and states of society.” These words were written of Herodotus. That they might well have been written of, the author of the Sějarah Mělayu or Malay Annals, whoever he may have been, is the theme of this article.