Corea, which was till lately the last but one of the “Forbidden Lands,” is now slowly unfolding its archæological treasures to the gaze of travellers.

It has been the almost invariable remark of certain scholars who have devoted their attention to the study of the old Tamil literature, that it seems, to judge from its actual state and form, to have had no commencement. Unlike the languages and literatures of other peoples, which pass through various stages of natural development before arriving at maturity, the high dialect of the Tamil has apparently sprung up into full-grown manhood from the very instant of its birth, like the fabled offsprings of rishis, without traversing the intermediate states of infancy and youth. The philologist has before him a language which, to borrow the words of an eminent lexicographer, is “in its poetic form more polished and exact than the Greek, and in both dialects, with its borrowed treasures, more copious than the Latin;” but of the origin and growth of which he seeks in vain to catch a glimpse through the veil of impenetrable darkness which hangs over it. If we go back to the earliest source of existing literature, we find it to be a grammatical one. In fact, the author of Tolkâppiyam, perhaps the oldest grammatical work extant, is alleged to have been the immediate disciple of the mythical Agastya, the reputed author of the Tamil language itself. Beyond Agastya all is obscurity.

The French translators of the “Meadowa of Gold and Mines of Gems,” by the Arabian traveller and writer Mes ūdiyy, who composed this book in A.H. 332 (A.D. 943), refer their readers, in their general index, from the name of Zebbā'u, which they have unaccountably transliterated as “Zibba,” to “Zenobie,” though they never once use this latter name in the eighteen pages (vol. iii. pp. 181–198) of the work devoted to the history of this princess. Neither have they said one word in their notes to that part of the volume to show how Zebbā'u may be identified with Zenobia. (But see the concluding passages to this paper on p. 596.)

The paper which. I formerly wrote on the Rig-Veda was merely intended to lay down the general principles which guided the ancient Arranger of that venerable collection of poems. It was my good fortune to be the first to lay before scholars the following discoveries:—

1. That the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda are arranged in the order of their diminishing length.

2. That the First Maṇḍala differs from the rest, and that it possesses a special arrangement of its own.

3. That Maṇḍalas II. to VII. are uniform in character.

4. That the hymns of the Ninth Maṇḍala are manifestly arranged according to the metre and length of the hymns.

5. That certain long hymns in the Ṛig-Veda can be resolved into short sets of verses.

6. That the Tenth Maṇḍala consists of, at least, two collections, showing a distinct mark of cleavage between the 84th and 85th hymns.

Palæography never attracted much the attention of Assyriologists, and in only a few cases have they either turned their mind to the origin, growth and development of the Cuneiform syllabary. M. Menant, who tried in his grammar to give a list as complete as possible of all the signs of various styles and epochs, has unfortunately accepted many doubtful characters, and has not distinguished the really archaic from the ornamental style. F. Lenormant, who specially studied the Babylonian syllabaries now in the British Museum, has done much to elucidate many points, but his observations bear only on a few characters, and have for principal object to ascertain the values and meanings in order to help the decipherer in reading rightly the inscriptions. He made a great step no doubt in attributing exclusively certain values of the characters to Akkadian and others to the Assyrian texts, but other works seem to have claimed his attention, and he did not follow up the subject.

Among the tablets acquired by the British Museum in 1884, is one of peculiar interest. It is a tablet of unbaked clay, 6⅛ in. by 7¾ in., inscribed, on both sides, with two columns of writing in the Cuneiform or wedge-character. This tablet is one of a series which must have contained, when entire, a complete chronicle of all the important events which had taken place in Babylonia, Assyria, Elam, etc., in ancient times. The text (of which a paraphrase has already been published by the present writer) begins with the reign of Nabonassar (747 B.C.), and ends with the accession of Šamas-šum-ukîn or Saosduchinos, brother of Aššur-banî-âpli (667 B.C.). The subject of this tablet was continued on others of the series, a part of one of the tablets, referring to the reign of Nabonidus and relating the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, having been acquired in 1878.