In his important “Contributions to the History of the Mahābhārata,” Dr. Bühler has proved that in Kumārila's time, i.e. in the first half of the eighth century, there existed a Mahābhārata, attributed to the sage Vyāsa, which was not merely an epic poem, but was looked upon as a Smṛti, or sacred tradition; and that it contained not only the Çānti and Anuçāsana Parvans, but also many other portions found in our editions of the Mahābhārata, which have been repeatedly declared to be “late additions.” Dr. Bühler has further shown that inscriptions of about A.D. 500 quote the Mahābhārata as an authority on sacred law, and describe it as a bulky work, containing 100,000 verses. And as we must allow some time, say a century or two, for the gradual development of this sacred character, he concludes “that the Mahābhārata certainly was a Smṛti or Dharmaçāstra from A.D. 300, and that about A.D. 500 it certainly did not differ essentially in size and in character from the present text.” Dr. Bühler adds that further researches “will in all probability enable us to push back the lower limits, which have been thus established provisionally, by four to five centuries and perhaps even further.”

Besides Ṡubḥ-i-Ezel and his family, there reside at Famagusta, in Cyprus, three Ezelīs, all natives of Zanjān, who have settled there in order to be near their master. Two of these, Ustā Maḥmūd and Sheykh 'Alī Bakhsh, are brothers, sons of a certain Hājī Muḥammad Ḥuseyn, who was one of the Bābīs put to death in cold blood by Amīr Aslān Khān after the suppression of the Bābī rising at Zanjān in the winter of 1850. The third, named Āqā 'Abdu'1-Aḥad, who is the author of the following narrative, is the most interesting personality of the three. Living alone in a small, bare lodging, surrounded by unsympathetic and suspicious Turks, and admitted to the presence of Ṡubḥ-i-Ezel (for whose sake he has thus cut himself off from his friends, his relatives, and his native land) only, perhaps, once in ten days or a fortnight, he nevertheless exhibits a constant cheerfulness of demeanour, a scrupulous neatness of apparel, and an uncomplaining resignation and patience which command one's respect. I first made his acquaintance, and that of his two fellow-townsmen, during the fortnight which I spent at Famagusta in the spring of 1890; but it was not until the spring of last year (March 18–25, 1896) that I had an opportunity of seeing him again, and only then did I learn that a suggestion which I had formerly made to him, that he should set down in writing his recollections of the siege of Zanjān and of the calamities which subsequently befell the Bābīs there, had actually led him to compile the interesting narrative of which I here offer a translation.

The present section is exclusively devoted to the text of Udbhaṭa's Alaṅkārasārasahgraha, a short account of which was given in the former part of these Notes. Unfortunately I have had to depend almost entirely upon one manuscript, a copy, in Dr. Bühler's collection, of that found by him in Jesalmir and deposited in the Government Library in Poona. It is neatly and carefully written, however, and can generally be relied upon; and, where the text-portion of it fails, the commentary which accompanies it not infrequently supplies the deficiency. Besides these, the quotations from Udbhaṭa which are found in later writers have afforded valuable aid.

[Mr. W. Crooke, late of Mirzapur, and Editor of North Indian Notes and Queries, kindly gave me the notes of the following story as told by the Brahman. In his version the story is much shortened, the Iguana episode does not occur, and the finale is different. But this story is more dramatic than the Jataka, and it is not improbable that here we have a version nearer than that is to the original.]

The following dissertation is the second in my series of “Prolegomena to Ancient Indian History,” of which the first was the essay entitled “The Iron Pillar of Delhi (Mihraulī) and the Emperor Candra (Chandra)” published in this Journal in January, 1897. The article entitled “Samudra Gupta,” published, in the same number of the Journal, gives in narrative form the history of the Emperor Samudra Gupta. The present paper is devoted to the detailed technical discussion of the authorities for the statements of that narrative. I may perhaps be pardoned for inviting attention to the proposed identification of King Acyuta; the justification of the reading Mahendragiri as a king's name; the probable identification of the kings Viṣṇugōpa and Hastivarman; the certain identification of the kingdom of Pālakka; the suggested identifications of the kingdoms of Devarāṣṭra and Kustbalapura; the probable identification of King Candravarman; the location of the Ābhīra tribe; and the attempted identification and differentiation of the Ṣāhi, Ṣāhānuṣāhi, and Daivaputra kings.

The Congress was held, as announced, at Paris, from the 5th to the 12th of September. The attendance was unusually large, about eight hundred members having given in their adhesion, of whom nearly a hundred were ladies.