There is a certain rock edict of Aśōka, regarding the interpretation and application of which no final result has as yet been arrived at. That this has been the case, is due chiefly to an unfortunate initial mistake, which introduced a supposed word, taken to mean “two and a half,” into the reading of a passage of primary importance which mentions a certain period of years. It was subsequently fully admitted that a misreading had been made. But the effect of that misreading remained. And, like similar mistakes in other matters, the initial mistake made here left an influence which neither the scholar who made it, nor subsequent inquirers, could shake off.

No event since the time of the Prophet Muḥammad has, probably, so profoundly affected the history of Western Asia as the disastrous wave of Mongol Invasion which, beginning with the first conquests of Changíz Khán at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era, culminated in the sack of Baghdad and the extinction of the Caliphate by his grandson Húlágú Khán in a.d. 1258.

The remarks which follow are based on notes which I have made in reading Professor Torp's Etruskische Beiträge, vols. i–ii (Leipzig, 1902–3). I have never myself studied the Etruscan language, and my knowledge of Dravidian is rather limited. I was, however, at once struck by the apparent analogy of several features in both families, and I have thought it worth while to arrange my notes and make a short abstract of them. I do not think that I have solved the vexed question about the origin of the old inhabitants of Etruria. But I hope to have shown that there are many interesting points in which their language follows the same principles as that of the Draviḍas, and that I have, in so doing, added something to the probability of the theory that the old Etrurians did not belong to the Indo-European stock.

In 1903 I purchased from a dealer in the Khan al-Khalil, in Cairo, a brass Astrolabe inscribed with the Kufy character, which I had examined, haggled for, and reluctantly left three years before. The fact is, that at the present day this old bazaar of Cairo is the last place to find anything of interest. The European visitors are tourists who are personally conducted, and who purchase wildly and at any cost the gaudy modern stuff which the dragoman recommends. The dealers are Armenians and Jews solely catering for this trade; and it was, I presume, only from sheer dilatoriness that the dealer had not sent it down to one of his brethren near the Ezbekieh, where it would have been quickly disposed of. At any rate, it was out of place among the forgeries and rubbish which form the feature of the once romantic Khan al-Khalil.

The well-known Śāradā character of Kaśmīr is described by Bühler p. 56 of his Indische Palaeographie. He points out that it is descended from the western variety of the Gupta type of alphabets, and notes that a modern variety of it is the so-called Ṭakkarī of Jammū and the neighbourhood. Bühler does not, so far as I am aware, mention any other of the modern alphabets of north-western India.

Three manifest Holy ones there are who proceed according to the word of the Āfrīn.

Numerous examples might be quoted of philosophical, or political, or religious parties who have claimed for themselves a central, or a moderate, position, far removed from the ignorances and foolishnesses of the extremists on either side. There are even cases in which the critical historian may observe that, on a fair survey of the points in dispute at the time and place in question, the claim is fairly justified. So the Buddha claimed for his view of life that it was the Middle Way between worldliness, or indifference, on the one side, and asceticism on the other. So Aristotle described the ideal virtue as the Golden Mean.

Last year Professor Sachau, of Berlin, pointed out to me among the MSS. in the British Museum an important work of Arabic philology. The work bears the title “ Critical Observations on the Mistakes of Philologers by Abu’l-Qāsim ‘Ali ibn Ḥamza al-Baṣri ” (cf. Rieu, Supplement to Catalogue of Arabic MSS., No. 841). The British Museum MS. is a modern copy of an ancient codex in the Khedivial Library in Cairo, and is on the whole legible and accurate, though at points it is not quite reliable. Another similar copy exists at Strassburg (cf. Nöldeke, Z.D.M.G., 1886), and the Library of Count Landberg contains a third. The work includes ‘observations’ on the following eight ancient philological works:—(1) The Nawādir of Abu Ziyād al-Kilābi al-’A‘rābi; (2) the Nawādir of Abu ‘Amr ash-Shaibāni ; (3) the Kitāb an-Nabāt of Aḥmad ibn Da’ūd ad-Dīnawari; (4) the Kāmil of al-Mubarrad; (5) the Faṣīḥ of Tha‘lab ; (6) the Gharīb al-Muṣannaf of Abu Obaid Qāsim ibn Sallām; (7) the Iṣlāḥ al-Manṭiq of Ibn as-Sikkīt; (8) the Makṣur wa’1-Mamdūd of Ibn Wallād. The ‘ observations,’ though sometimes pedantic, are usually valuable from a lexicographical point of view. Abu’l-Qāsim gives many corrections of the statements of the authors on whose books he comments, and supports his contentions by quotations from the poets, which are in many instances not to be found in the lexicons or in similar works.