All students of the facts and doctrines of Islām, that uncompromising and purely monotheistic faith promulgated by Muhammad to the pagan Arabians, his kinsmen or countrymen, as also to the Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians who dwelt in and about Madīna, or the three Arabias, thirteen hundred years ago, will have met with some mention of what European writers generally know as “The ninety-nine names of God,” but which are denominated in chap. vii. v. 179, as also in chap. xx. v. 7, of the Qur'ān itself, “The Most Comely Names,” .

The Society was informed in the Report which was read at the Anniversary Meeting in May, and which has since been printed in the Journal, that many new Inscriptions had recently been discovered in Babylonia by Mr. Hormazd Rassam. When that gentleman lately returned to England from Mesopotamia, he left working parties both at Babylon and Nineveh, and it is from the excavations of the former place that the British Museum has recently received the very interesting relic which I am now about to describe.

In a Report recently sent to the Government of Madras on antiquities discovered at Bēzwaḍa, and the Rock-cut Temple at Uṇḍavilli (both on the Lower Kṛishṇā in South-Eastern India), I devoted considerable space to the question of the identity of the former place with the capital city of Dhanakacheka as described by Hiouen-Thsang. I do not claim to be in any sense considered as the originator of this discovery, Mr. Fergusson having previously pointed out, first the likelihood, and afterwards the certainty, that the two places were identical.

In 1877 I had the pleasure of presenting to the Society M. Sauvaire's translation of the curious treatise on weights and measures by Már Eliyá. That translation was founded on the Paris MS., which presented some considerable lacunæ; the whole of Chapters V. to X., and portions of Chapters XI. XII. and XIII., being missing. These M. Sauvaire has now been able to supply from a Gotha MS., which Dr. Pertsch was so good as to copy for him. I prefix to this supplementary translation part of M. Sauvaire's explanatory letter.

In a paper published in volume xlvii. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, I attempted to identify the nationality of some foreign figures depicted in the rock-cut caves at Ajantá. The conclusions I arrived at were:—

1st. That the figures with long flowing coats and sugarloaf hats in one of the pictures were Persians.

2nd. That the principal personages in three “Drinking scenes” were Bactrians.

3rd. That the scenes represented phases of Indian life from 1800 to 2000 years ago.

When this paper was first presented to the Council in July last, I objected to its being received, inasmuch as it contained a vast amount of irrelevant matter, and personalities, which I should regret to see introduced into any discussion in this Society. Since then Mr. Grote, in the exercise of a discretion given him by the author, has cut it down to about one-half its original length, and now presents it in a form to which I personally can have no possible objection. I would only, however, like to observe, that the title now given to it is a little misleading. It would hardly be worth while, if an attempt to fix their dates were all the paper contained, to print a disquisition on the age of the Caves at Ajantá by a person who has never visited them, and who, though eminent as a Sanskrit scholar, has hitherto shown no aptitude for, or knowledge of, archaeological subjects.