Comparison of the vocabularies of Tibetan and Chinese, although attempted in the past, cannot be said as yet to have been undertaken along lines likely to produce outstanding results. All too frequently single words have been singled out for comparison, or a single member of a known family has been selected from the one language and placed beside a single word, seemingly related, likewise torn loose from a known group in the other. Or, again, an entire series of comparisons seems to rest on identity of meanings no matter how widely dissimilar the words which carry them may be in the two languages. The dangers of such methods are obvious. We are not only very probably selecting the wrong members on one side, or on both, but are detaching the words so used entirely from their semantic backgrounds.

Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra states: tad (= tatra, sc. devayajane) etāṃ prācīnavaṁśāṁ śālāṃ māpayati; kṛttikāḥ khalv imāḥ prācīṃ diśaṃ na parijahati: tāsāṁ, saṃdarśanena māpayed ity etad ekam; śroṇāsaṃdarśanena māpayed ity etad ekam; citrāsvātyor antareṇety etad aparam.

Even if a king follows a path contrary to religion and to reason he is nevertheless praised by his subjects (on account of fear); he, therefore, hardly knows what is appropriate or not.

In the course of my lecture on “Some Coins of the Mauryas and Śungas”, delivered before the Royal Asiatic Society in June, 1935, I emphasized two symbols found on the signed coins as being essentially Mauryan, namely, the “moon-on-hill” and the hollow cross. What seems a clinching piece of evidence on the question has since become available to me from the Rāmpurwä copper bolt of Aśoka, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, through the kindness of my friend, Mr. Durga Prasad, who examined the bolt and found the marks. A rubbing of these on tissue paper given to him by Mr. N. G. Majumdar, Superintendent in charge of the Archæological Section of the Museum, is reproduced on Plate II. The symbols (written from right to left) are arranged in columns as below (Pl. II (a)):—

Among the royal titles used by the early Sinhalese kings there are two which, as royal titles, were not adopted by any of the dynasties known to us in India, and were therefore peculiar to Ceylon. An investigation into the history of these two titles is likely to throw some light on the origin of kingship in ancient Ceylon, and I therefore propose in this paper to pursue this line of study so far as the material available at present allows us to do so. The conclusions at which I have arrived by a study of the available data on this may not, in the present state of our knowledge, be taken as definitely established; but they might, nevertheless, be worthy of consideration by scholars interested in the early history of the Sinhalese people.

The pre-Confucian period has come, during the last decade, to occupy a central place in the attention of students of the history of Chinese culture. Research on the oracle bones, scientific excavations at Anyang and elsewhere, and other investigations and discoveries have not served merely to throw light on the civilization of late Shang and early Chou times. They have also shown us that those periods saw the laying of the foundations of the whole structure of Chinese culture, as it has persisted even to our own day, so that to understand them is no mere concern of antiquarians, but a vital necessity for any deep understanding of the currents of Chinese history.

Surâqah B. Mirdâs al-Bâkiqî was a contemporary of the great trio, al-Akhṭal, al-Farazdaq, and Jarîr, whose names stand out so pre-eminently in the list of the Umayyad bards that all contemporary poets are thrown into the shade. Thus there is no article on our poet in the Aghâdnî, and he would have passed quite unnoticed but for his taking part in the literary duel between al-Farazdaq and Jarir. The public scolding match () in which these two masters were engaged for many years attracted our poet and, like the well-known Akhṭal, he, too, joined in the fray with his sympathies for al-Farazdaq. The anecdotes relating to the “flytings” (), which he and Jarir composed against each other, as narrated on the authority of Abû. 'Ubaidah, will be found interesting. It is said that Muhammad b. 'Umair b. 'Utârid al-Dârimî, a noble, offered four thousand dirhams and a horse to the poet who could compose a poem giving al-Farazdaq preference over Jarîr. Of all poets Surâqah, who had already composed some invective upon Jarîr, took up the challenge and produced a piece of lampoon which was carried to Jarîr, requiring him to make a reply forthwith. Jarîr tried throughout the whole night but failed. At break of day, however, his poetical genius came to his aid and the sharp lampoon that this great poet then produced is said to have silenced Surâqah against Jarîr once for all.

In Darlowe and Mode's Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scriptures, 1903 (=DM.), the earliest Hindi translation of the Gospels is entered as follows: “1806. The Gospels translated by Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765–1837), president of the bench at Calcutta, and honorary professor in Fort William College, the first great Sanskrit scholar of Europe.” This is confirmed by Pearce Carey's book, William Carey (=PC.). In the third edition, p. 408, he writes “so far from vaunting how many versions he and his colleagues could add to their credit, they postponed the publication of their translated Hindi Gospels till Colebrooke's was printed in 1806”. In the eighth edition, 1934, p. 420, “they postponed till 1811 the publication of their translated Hindi Gospels leaving the field to Judge Cole brooke's version for five years.”