The text K. 2612, cited by me in my Lexicon of Accadian Prayers as a duplicate of Ebeling, Quellen, i, 40 f., and K. 2373 and Sm. 690, has now been joined to Rm. 2, ii, 269, enabling a more accurate restoration to be made of several of the lines. The text shows several notable variant readings.

Scarcely ever has Islām experienced more tragical times and more hardships than during the Mongol invasion in the course of the thirteenth century a.d. With the despite of the nomads, practitioners of the open-air life, for sedentary occupations, the people of Jengis Khān turned against and mercilessly destroyed the towns and works of civilization everywhere. Their disastrous campaign was only facilitated by the decomposition of the political unity of Islām at that time. In Baghdād the 'Abbāsid caliphate still subsisted, but its splendour was on the wane; to the west of Baghdād, in Egypt, Palestine, and a part of Syria, the Ayyūbids reigned, and in Asia Minor the Seljūqs, while to the east of Baghdād the Turkish princes from Khiva had, a rather insecure hold on the vast stretch of the Khwārizmian empire from the Ganges to the Tigris and from Turkestān to the Indian Ocean. This state of affairs was inviting to an enterprising invader of the sort of Jengis Khān who, in 1218, crushed the Khwārizmian empire, while his grandson, Hūlāghū Khān, put an end to the 'Abbāsid caliphate in 1258. The western provinces of Islām, including Egypt, were, however, spared from the devastating fury of the Mongols by the Mamlūk Sulṭān's victory over Ketbogha, Hūlāghū's general, at 'Ayn Jālūt, Palestine, in 1260. When in 1299–1301 his grandson Qāzān failed in conquering Syria Islām was definitely safe from further Mongol attacks.

In his article on Gandhara Grama that appeared in the issue of October, 1935, of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Mr. A. H. Fox Strangways observed that a particular line in Damodara's Sangitadarpana regarding Ga-Grama, had induced him to visit India thirty years ago. The whole of that article, now under consideration, induces me to revisit the region of the Grama-question.

In this article I propose to examine the position held by the executive officers ofthe Mogul Empire in the light of some new documentary evidence, and from a standpoint different from that occupied by earlier writers on the subject. It is well known that there was no differentiation between civil and military employment: all officers, from the princes of the blood down to what would now be called sergeants and corporals, formed a single State Service, in which each individual had a definite rank or position (manṣab); and ordinarily each of them had to maintain out of his emoluments acontingent of cavalry available for the Emperor's work. Some officers might receive their emoluments in cash, but as a rule payment was made by an assignment of the land-revenue of a specified area (jāgīr), which the recipient made his own arrangements to collect. The questions at issue relate mainly to the remuneration ofofficers and the size and constitution of their contingents.