An Act of Truth is a formal declaration of fact, accompanied by a command or resolution or prayer that the purpose of the agent shall be accomplished. For example, a hunter asks a sage how a certain nymph can be captured, and the sage replies: “Nymphs can be captured by the utterance of a truth; nor, under such circumstances, have they power to vanish from sight.” Accordingly the hunter says to the nymph he desires to capture: “You are the beautiful daughter of King Druma; if this be true, halt! you are bound fast! If it be true that you are the daughter of King Druma, and that you were reared by the king, move not a foot, O fair Mancharā!” By the utterance of this truth on the part of the hunter the nymph addressed is immediately bound fast, and is unable to vanish from sight; but all of her companions vanish into the air.

The Jews were the first in the field; and the earliest Western legends which made their way to the East are taken from the Old Testament. Josephus has told us that the Semites were settled on the Kabul River by the first century a.d.; they may have been there still earlier; and there is an ancient tradition that Jews penetrated about this time into China—a thing not improbable in itself, if it could be authenticated. Now in the year a.d. 75 a Chinese general (Keng) Kong was besieged by the Hiungnu somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kashgar. The Hiungnu cut off the water supply; and the Chinese dug a well 150 feet deep, but found no water. They were reduced to the last extremities by thirst. Kong, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, cried: “I have heard that in olden time the Erh-Shih general drew his sword, and pierced the rock, and straightway a rushing stream gushed out.” Thereupon Kong put on his garments of state, and prostrating himself beside the waterless well, prayed for the army and for himself. Presently the well brimmed over with water.

1. Salvation's Hail to the Nations Chief,—Prayers for the Support and Progress of the Cause—and for the Spiritual Reward.

Humāyūn married Hājī, alias Bēga Bēgam, about 1527. Fourteen years later, in 1541, he married Hamīda Bāno Bēgam, who became the mother of Akbar in 1542, and was known by the honorific style of Maryam Makānī, “dwelling with Mary,” that is to say the Virgin Mary, after her death. On the face of it no confusion between the two ladies should be possible. Nevertheless, they have been frequently confounded, and the error can be traced back as early as 1612, only seven years after Akbar's death. The common error is explained by the fact that Akbar treated Hājī Bēgam, the elder lady, as a second mother, so that many people believed him to be her son.

In trying to decipher texts of which we know neither the language nor the values of the written characters it is evident that the first steps must be taken by conjecture. It is only when the conjectures corroborate one another that progress can be made. I have tried to restrict my guesses to what is in itself probable, and had not intended to publish them without further investigation. But investigation takes time, and for special reasons it seemed best to print now such of my results as appear to be fairly well justified. It is unnecessary to criticize other attempts at decipherment, as I have tried to start entirely afresh, without a prejudice for or against any previous system. Several of the identifications of Professor Sayce, the pioneer in this as in many other lines of research, have, however, been adopted without discussion, because they appeared on consideration to be certainly right. Much else may be derived unconsciously from him, for we have often discussed the problem together, and but for his encouragement I should long ago have given it up altogether. The notes relate almost entirely to texts in Messerschmidt's Corpus, and only to the more legible of those. A valuable addition to the material has been made by the publication of excellent facsimiles of inscriptions at Carchemish (Jerabis) by Hogarth, Lawrence, & Woolley, with which I hope to deal on another occasion.