Ana hu hibil ziwa zadiqa u'uthria ahai bnia nhura ḏ minh huaina yatbinin banana rabtia ḏ nhura uruha ḏ qudsha ḏ shimat qalaian qashtinun 'l piṭrunia ukasitinun '1 hililia hiwaria urmit sandlia hilia blighrai wamra 'qum 'zil baina 'mhinun l'uthria rurbania bnia nhura anin ḏ hzainh sdamnh hramnh. 'l aina bishta ukawihta usdamnh hramnh 'l aina aqta uraiubtia u'l aina qliqtia u'l aina mṣuṣtia u'l aina 'kimtia u'l aina raiubtia mhaina bakla rba ḏ ziwa ubnarga rba ḏ. shiriatha urmaina btasniqia ḏ arqa titaita wasutha tihuilh '1 P. br P. b'sqtaihun 'uthria rurbania bnia nhura (banhura ?) (460) yatbia ḏ 'qara hiia zakhin … Hazin tartin babania kdub lṭasa d abara 'u lmagalta d ṭabia urmih bgufta d qaina ḏ zrara urmih para upartia umihla umisha ḏ shushma hawia asutha lgabra u'ntha u'lyanqia u'l yanqitha tum qrih lmihla u'l piria u'mbia u'lania u'lzira u'l bazira hiia zakhin …

18. The Taurine. On p. xxxiii Mr. Allan gives a group of eighteen symbols “ formed by combinations of taurine symbols. None of them are common, and most of them are characteristic of variations only ”. Three of these require notice. No. 6, No. 18, and No. 7, are shown the wrong way up, No. 6 in its perfect form occurs as one of the four class-marks on 147 of the Bhiṛ Mound coins (Class D), on many of which it is clear, as . The vertical line in symbol 6 is the shaft of a spear, the spear-head of which is in the centre of the mark.

1. The ancient Semitic poem here presented is inscribed in alphabetical cuneiform upon a clay tablet unearthed in 1933 at Ras esh-Shamrah (ancient Ugarit) on the north coast of Syria. The tablet dates approximately from the fifteenth-fourteenth century b.c. The text was first edited by M. Charles Virolleaud in the periodical Syria, xvii (1936), pp. 209–228, but the present interpretation differs toto cælo from that proposed in the editio princeps.

Every student of Indian history is familiar with the extraordinary event, quite unique in the annals of the Muslim dynasties in India, which took place in 1537, when Burhān Niẓām Shāh, the Sunni ruler of the Ahmadnagar state, in the Deccan, proclaimed Shi'ism the official religion of his kingdom. Indian historians offer only “popular” explanations for this important step, attributing it to religious zeal or the superstitious fears of the prince. It appears, however, that Burhān Niẓām Shāh (who reigned from 914/1508 to 961/1554), though nothing exceptional, was, nevertheless, quite a reasonable and statesmanlike ruler, who would hardly permit his religious emotions to carry him too far. It is therefore permissible to suspect some weightier motives behind this act, in the form of considerations connected with the policy of the then ascendant dynasty of the Safavids of Persia, which still remain unrevealed. As is known, both Shah Ismā'īl and Ṭahmāsp used to take much interest in Indian politics. In all this the central figure, who inspired the policy of Burhān Niẓām Shāh, was the rather enigmatic personality of a Persian emigrant, a learned theologian, philosopher, poet, stylist, and politician, Shāh Ṭāhir, surnamed Dakkanī and Ḥusaynī. It would be very interesting to study every side of his activities. This, however, would carry us too far; the present note is only intended to draw attention to quite an unexpected circumstance which presents this already extraordinary historical figure in a still more extraordinary light: some materials, recently discovered in Badakhshan, reveal that in reality he was regarded as an Ismaili Imam, a successor of the khudāwands of Alamūt, in a schismatic line of the Imams, which became extinct about two hundred years ago.

In the well-known doctrine of the Three Bodies of the Buddha, the physical and earthly manifestation is called a nirmāṇa-kāya, “a body of artifice” or even more literally “a body of measurement”; a body made, then, as images and other works of art are made, by a “measuring out” (root mā). In the Divyâvadāna, ch. xxxvii, the word nimittam is similarly used of the Buddha's appearance which he himself emanates and projects for Rudrâyaṇa's painters, who cannot grasp his likeness unaided. It may be remarked that Indian imagery is always as much or more an iconometry (tālamāna) than an iconography; and that all this has an important bearing on the pragmatic equivalence, in Buddhist iconodule theory, of the verbal, carnal, and fictile manifestations by means of which the Buddha is presented to the world in a likeness. Our present object, however, is rather to point out what has not been generally recognized hitherto, that prototypes of the expressions nirmāṇa-kāya and nimittam occur already in the Brāhmaṇas and Saṁhitās.

In my examination of the tradition relating to the migration of the Parsees to India, in connection with the condition of the Muslim world in the middle of the seventh century, I have noted the account given by Balāḏurī (ed. De Goeje, 392), who states in his narrative of the conquest of Kirmān by the Arabs that a number of the Parsees sailed away in ships over the sea, i.e. in the direction of India. My point of view on this subject, as generally on all the materials which we possess relative to this question, I have formulated before: here I would merely reiterate that this account consists of two words only, unaccompanied by further explanations, of which one may be said to be obscure. Similar accounts in an expanded form exist in Arabic literature, and I think that it may be useful to give the following extract from an Arabic writer of recognized authority, albeit of later date—Yāqūt, who, in his famous Geographical Dictionary (ed. Wüstenfeld, iii, 31), has the following under Subuḏān:—

“Subuḏān. Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan relates the following. Four farsakhs from Baṣra is the town Ubulla on the shore of the Crooked Tigris (sc. Shaṭṭ al-'Arab); the inhabitants of this town were Persians, labouring on the sea. When the Arabs came near them, they loaded 400 ships with as much of their possessions as possible, and with provisions, and sailed away.

Ṭabarī (Annales, i, 2448), in his account of the capture of Madā'in-Ctesiphon, the capital of Sasanian Persia, in describing the booty which was taken by the Arabs, writes as follows:—

“And there (they found) two vessels (of a special kind). In one of these (was found) a horse made of gold, with saddle, tail-band and collar of silver, and in the silver were set gems and emeralds, and the bridle was similar; and (on this horse) was a horseman made of silver covered with precious stones. And in the other (was) a she-camel made of silver with saddlegirth of gold, and helm or rein of gold, and all these were set with gems; and on this (she-camel) was a man made of gold covered with precious stones.”

Brockelmann, G.A.L. Erster Supplementband, p. 353, mentions a Kitāb Masā'il al-ruhbān, ascribed to the famous Ṣūfī Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī, of which a copy is preserved in the Āṭafīya Library in Hyderabad. (Two other copies of the same work, one in Hyderabad and one at Istanbul, are recorded ibid. Nachträge, p. 954.) Through the kindness of Dr. Stapleton I have obtained a copy of the Hyderabad manuscript (described in vol. i, p. 388, of the Āṣafīya catalogue), and this transcript is now deposited in the India Office Library, under the serial number 4585.