Turning over the sheets of some of my old books I found a very complicated question in the field of Ottoman poetry which I wish to discuss below.

The late Russian orientalist, V. D. Smirnov, in the second edition of his Turkish Chrestomathy, published a number of extracts from a Turkish (Ottoman) poem mathnawi entitled . In the preface he makes the following explanatory note concerning this poem (the square brackets are mine): “the extracts (pp. 433–437) are from , Budapest manuscript No. 24, dated 928/1522. And in the title of the codex we read, and in the text the author, many times mentioning himself, names himself (f. 13v., 120r., 210r.), (f. 107v.); thus it is certain that this work, written in 829/1425 is by Moḥammad ban Ṣāliḥ Bījān (+1449), the author of the famous Turkish religious poem . But neither in the European catalogues, nor in [the book of] Ḥājjī Khalīfa is there mentioned such a work with the name of Yāzījī Oghlī. The last [Ḥājjī Khalīfa] remarks quite vaguely that is a Turkish work in verses, belonging to Shaikh Zāda, who wrote it in the reign of the Sultan Yildirim (Ḥ.Kh. iv, 412, No. 9007). The poem of Ibn Khaṭīb is extremely interesting because of its archaic language and orthography, as well as because the religious-didactic thoughts of the author, which are contained in it, in the spirit and style of the Mawlawi works, like, for instance, of 'Āshiq, but, perhaps, with a little greater fanatical Moslem passion and enmity towards non-Moslems, especially Christians (for example, f. 128r., 209a–210).”

We must admit that very little is known about the first development of Indian logic and particularly about Buddhist logic before Diṅnāga. If we take the best manuals of Indian logic now available, such as those by Suali, Vidyābhūṣāṇa, Keith, or the most comprehensive Histories of Indian philosophy like those of Dāsgupta and Rādhākrishna we shall easily recognize that the data contained therein are far from being satisfactory; more than that, they are also very often wrong. In fact, almost the only source from which their statements are derived is the book by Sugiura, who certainly had the merit of giving the first account of Indian logic as preserved in Chinese sources, but, being himself absolutely without knowledge of orthodox nyāya and of Sanscrit, is in his statements and in his translations very often misleading.

Among the most interesting exhibits at the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum at Leyden are the Meccan musical instruments presented by the well-known Arabist and traveller, Professor Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje. They are displayed, in a special case containing other Meccan objects, in the bureau of the Director, Dr. H. H. Juynboll. These instruments, Dr. Snouck Hurgronje informs me, were not collected by himself personally, but by a Jidda friend who, unfortunately, omitted to supply the requisite data for scientific registering. Even their names are denied us. Yet with the help of the donor, both by conversations and correspondence, and the courtesy of the Director of the Museum, the present writer is able to submit an account of these instruments, which comprise a lute, two viols, three rustic reed-pipes, an oboe, a flute, and a tambourine.

Gilgit offers a rich field to the student of Folklore, and one which up to the present has been only partially worked.

In the Journal for April, 1927, pp. 209–26, I published some notes on the text of the first eight cantos of the Buddhacarita in the light of the old MS. in Nepal and of the Tibetan translation as edited and translated by Dr. Fr. Weller. The second part of the latter work has now appeared, containing the Tibetan text of cantos ix–xvii and the translation of cantos x–xvii, the translation of canto ix, which has gaps in the Sanskrit, being apparently reserved for further consideration. The notes in this part are full and careful and will be found of great help to all interested in the restoration of the Sanskrit text. We have every reason, too, to be grateful to Dr. Weller for undertaking the difficult task of translating the part from xiv, 33, on, for which no Sanskrit text exists, and, though, inevitably, owing to the nature of the Tibetan translation if the Sanskrit text were to be discovered minor details in Dr. Weller's translation would be found to require modification, at least we can now see clearly how Aśvaghoṣa handled the story.

Professor Langdon has pointed out to me that the Assyrian text published in Ebeling, KAR., No. 360, bears a close resemblance, alike in diction and in subject-matter, to Lehmann, Šamaššumukin, Taff. xxxvii f., edited in Streck, Assurbanipal, ii, 264–8, and it is almost certain that we have here two different but relạted accounts of the return of the god Marduk to Babylon with Shamashshumukin, in 668 B.C. In the following interpretation of KAR. 360, I am again very greatly indebted to Professor Langdon.

Portraiture, as we now know, was a very early member of the nascent arts of primitive man.

Palæolithic men were of necessity hunters. What they hunted on the plains and among the hills for food and covering, that they painted or carved on the walls and roofs of their cave dwellings and cliff shelters. The reindeer, the bison, the horse, the elephant were favourite objects of their vivid and impressionistic genius. What they lacked of imagination they made up for by exact memories and singularly skilful technique. Less frequent were their delineations of humanity, and as concerns the female part of it, most unflattering, being affected by a kind of exasperated candour. The Age of Chivalry was far distant indeed!