By the recent appearance in the “E. J. W. Gibb Memorial” of vol. xvii, the Kashf al-Maḥjúb of Dr. R. A. Nicholson, preceded, as it was, rather closely by the Treatise on Mysticism of Evelyn Underhill, the Eastern as well as the Western manifestations of the mystical spirit are portrayed. Dr. Nicholson is concerned exclusively with the former, which in Mysticism are but lightly touched on, its subject being that Mysticism which is dependent on a specific religious impulse, and is thereby distinguishable from Pantheism.

The subjoined catalogue describes a collection comprising 368 separate texts mainly in Sanskrit, which were collected by Dr. M. A. Stein and acquired at his expense chiefly at Śrīnagar during his visits to Kashmir between 1888 and 1905. Apart from texts needed by Dr. Stein for his labours, during 1888–99, on his critical edition and annotated translation of Kalhana's Rājataraṅgiṇī, numerous MSS. were purchased by him either to assist the work of fellow-scholars in Europe or on account of their philological or palæographical interest.

Le fragment de dhāraṇī publié ici provient de Touenhouang, d'où il a été rapporté par M. M. A. Stein à son second voyage d'exploration en Asie centrale. Il est écrit sur un morceau de rouleau, en double, d'abord en brāhmī, puis en écriture sogdienne. Le texte en brāhmī a été lu, transcrit, et annoté par M. de la Vallée Poussin, la transcription sogdienne a été étudiée par M. Gauthiot. On a disposé en tête de l'article les notes qui ont paru nécessaires; à la suite on a donné le texte entier en transcription littérale; en dernier lieu figure la reproduction intégrate de l'original.

The Roman character may be used for Oriental languages in two ways: first, to represent in writing the sounds of a spoken language; and secondly, to represent the characters of a written language by another set of characters. The first process is usually called phonetic writing, the second transliteration. The second process includes the first. As this may not be clear at first sight I will endeavour to explain what transliteration is.

The interest which attaches to Kanishka is manifold. Primarily it is Buddhist. Kanishka convoked the fourth great Buddhist Council, the Council held in Kashmir, which gave consistency and official sanction to the doctrines of Northern Buddhism and led to its adoption by the Yue-che, who in their turn became ardent propagators of the faith, diffusing its light among the nomads of Central Asia and introducing it to the knowledge of the cultured Chinese. The Buddhists in the north-western corner of the Panjāb preserved the memory of their royal patron; they adorned his memory with miracle and legend; they placed him by the side of Aśoka, the first great foster-father of their religion; and vague reminiscences of Kanishka lingered in this region to the time of the learned Alberūnī and of Kalhaṇa, author of the metrical Chronicles of Kashmir.

In the Indian Antiquary for December, 1893 (vol. xxii), on pp. 343–5, in a paper entitled “Notes on Antiquities in Rāmaññadesa (the Talaing country of Burma)” there is a discussion by Major (now Sir) R. C. Temple on two inscriptions figured on plates ix and ixa of the series illustrating the paper. These plates represent two glazed terra-cotta tiles found in Lower Burma, each one bearing in rather high relief two female figures elaborately robed and adorned with bracelets, necklets, ear-rings, pagodaspire-shaped head-coverings, etc. The attitudes of the figures differ slightly in the two plates. Above them, in each case, is an inscription in the native character which Sir R. C. Temple has read kwan phrau mā, pa mat Iwat, with the alternative suggestion of phra instead of phrau. He has tried to make sense of this legend in Talaing, Burmese, and Shan, with a further hint that it may possibly be Siamese. As a Talaing inscription he interprets it to mean something which, as being “against epigraphic experience”, he is “loth to accept”, namely, a vague reference to a “wife who is a friend for ever”, a statement which in fact has no particular point. In the other alternative languages he makes it out to be a formal dedication (lwat) of the tiles by a nobleman with a Siamese title and a Pāli name, one kwan phra Mahāpamat to wit. At the same time he adds the caution that the legend does not appear to be correct Siamese.

Harappa is a village, having a station on the North-Western Railway, in the Montgomery District, Panjāb: it is situated in lat. 30° 38′, long. 72° 52′, on the south bank of the Ravi, some fifteen miles towards the west-by-south from Montgomery. The place is now of no importance: but extensive ruins and mounds, one of which rises to the height of sixty feet, indicate that the case was otherwise in ancient times; and it has yielded thousands of coins of the “Indo-Scythians” and their successors. Amongst other objects of interest from this place, there are the three seals, full-size facsimiles of which are given in the accompanying Plate. The original seals are now in the British Museum, in the Department of British and Mediæval Antiquities in charge of Mr. Read. In all three cases, the substance of these seals seems to be a claystone, hardened by heat or some other means. In the originals, the devices and characters are sunk: the illustrations represent impressions from the originals, with the devices and characters reversed, as compared with the way in which they lie in the originals, and standing out in relief. The animal on A has been held to be a bull, but not an Indian bull, because it has no hump: another opinion, however, is that it may be a male deer of some kind. The animal on C has a tail of such a nature as to suggest that this creature cannot be a deer. On A the hind legs were not fully formed; and it is possible that a similar tail has been omitted there.