The word rtse, “peak” or “top”, is a very appropriate termination for the names of places in a mountainous region; in Tibet there are innumerable place-names of this type. In the Nob region of Chinese Turkestan we have noticed (JRAS. 1928, pp. 586–8) several such names, e.g. Klu-rtse, Snuṅ-rtse, Gyuṅ-druṅ-rtse. In the case of the last named we have suggested the possibility that -rtse may have denoted nothing more than a height in a fort. There may have been instances of such a nature; but in general the position will have been otherwise. The numerous names in -rtse will have been due to the occupation of commanding positions by the Tibetan troops for the purpose of observation and control. In the case of Pehu-rtse we shall quote documents which in fact refer to building operations. The actual designations of some of the places, e.g. Stag-sras-dges-gyi-rtse “Young-tigerdelight(??)-peak”, Hphrul – gyi – me – loṅ – kun – snaṅ – rtse “Magic – mirror – all – vision – peak”, while characteristically Tibetan, may also be set down partly to the fancy of those who established the new military posts. The names are naturally all Tibetan, and will not often have been attached to old sites.

In the “Yuzgat” Tablet we read: “and the dirges for Telibinus are finished” (Telibinuss-a mugauwas qati). The word I have rendered “dirges” is translated by the Assyrian tazimtu and includes the legends which were repeated in the celebration of what may be termed the death and resurrection of the Hittite god Telibinus. Telibinus, “the son of Teli,” like Khatebinus “the child of Khate”, was one of the deified kings of the primitive Hittites and is accordingly coupled with Zidkhariyas, another early hero, and Khebe the goddess of Kizzuwadna. In Greek mythology he was known as Telephus, King of Mysia. In the treaty of Subbiluliuma with Simassara he is called the god of Turmitta, which is identified by Professor Garstang with Derende.

In the Cairo Museum of Arab Art there are more than three thousand slabs of marble and stone bearing Cufic inscriptions. Most of these slabs are tombstones found in the ancient cemeteries of Cairo and Aswan. On each of these tombstones are inscribed the name of the deceased and the date of his death; hence they are invaluable in working out the evolution of Arabic writing. Only two hundred of these slabs are exhibited in the Museum, the others being kept in the stores and recesses of the building.

The hymn RV. iii, 53, is of an obscure and difficult nature. Oldenberg sees in it only an incongruous jumble of disconnected stanzas and refuses to adopt the theories of either Hillebrandt or Geldner concerning it. The former scholar looked upon it as a collection of yājyānuvākyāḥ belonging to the horse-sacrifice; but it really seems difficult to subscribe to such an explanation. The late Professor Geldner again always maintained that the hymn represented a uniform composition which had been taken out from the complete family saga of the Viśvāmitras. In one passage he calls it an āyuṣmatāṃ kathā; and, as then at any rate he was a staunch supporter of the ākhyāna-theory of Oldenberg, he probably found littledifficulty in looking upon it as being the metrical part of a composition, the prose frame of which was wanting and could only be supplied from Sāyaṇa and other commentator literature. The present writer long ago tried to explain why he cannot accept the ākhyāna-theory. But in spite of that it seems to him that Geldner was probably, in the main, right in looking upon the hymn as one connected piece of poetry, though details partly remain very obscure.

The assemblage of tribes known as the Bakhtiāri occupy the mountain tract in Southern Persia lying roughly between longitudes 48 40′ and 51 E, bounded on the south by the plains of Khuzistan and on the north by the districts of Chahārmahāl, Farēdan, and Khonsār, where the central Iranian Plateau blends into the great southern mountain range.

Considering the fact that the Mīmāṃsā, the Vedānta, the Sāṃkhya, and the Yoga schools owe their origin directly to the Vedas, the Brāhmaṇas, and the Upaniṣads, it may be expected that the doctrines of these would have been systematized and put together into the form of the Sūtras earlier than those of the Vaiśeṣika and the Nyāya schools, the essential tenets of which had their beginnings in a later and different kind of literature. This expectation, however, seems to be belied by the fact that the present Sāṃkhya-sūtras have been proved to belong to a very late period, as late as the fourteenth century a.d.; and the Yoga-sūtras are now believed by a number of scholars, following Professors Jacobi and Woods, to be as late as the fourth or fifth century a.d. Now, while the gap of an early systematic work on the Sāṃkhya is filled up by the Sāṃkhya-kārikā, or it may be explained by the surmise that there was an early Sūtra work, either a shorter form of the present one or altogether different from it, which is lost, the Yoga-sūtras are all that we have as a systematic exposition of the Yoga doctrines, and there is no reason to believe that they were preceded by another work of a similar nature. • The question, then, is whether the systematization of such an early school of thought as the Yoga would have been postponed until as late as the fourth or fifth century a.d., and until after the systematization of the doctrines of even the Vaiśeṣika and the Nyāya schools, which began later on, and the Sūtras of which definitely contain a reference to the Yoga doctrines of mystic intuition and concentration.

The majority of Arab weather prognostics are, as might be expected, concerned with the winter season, when the changeable weather gives scope for forecasting. The summer months in most Arabic-speaking lands are rainless, and except for wind changes offer little or no field for the activity of the weather prognosticator. The sun and moon, the stars, the rainbow, mist, dew, thunder and lightning, birds and insects all form constituents in Arabic weather forecasts.