We have now given the rule of the first stage concerning understanding what is heard and applying it; and also the rule of the second stage concerning the ecstasy which is encountered in the heart; so let us now give what of it oozes to the outside, consisting of cries and weeping and movements and rending of clothes, etc. So we say

Khurāsān in the middle ages was far more extensive than is the province of this name in modern Persia. Mediæval Khurāsān extended on the north-east to the Oxus, and included all the districts round Herat which now belong to Afghanistān. On the other hand, the small province of Kūmis, on the northern boundary of the Great Desert, which at the present day is included within the limits of Persian Khurāsān, was of old a separate district, and formed in the time of Mustawfi a province apart.

The Persian poem of Wis and Ramîn, by Fahraldin Asád Al Astarabadi Al Fakhri Al Gurgani, was published at Calcutta in 1864–65 by Captain W. Nassau Lees, LL.D.; an exhaustive account of it, by K. H. Graf, will be found on pp. 375–433 of vol. xxiii of Zeitschrift d. Deutschen Morgenl. Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1869.

What had of old been the province of Media the Arabs named Al-Jibāl—‘ the Mountains ’—a perfectly appropriate name, as will be seen by a glance at the map, for the great mountain region separating the plains of Mesopotamia from the highlands of Persia. In the time of the Saljūḳ princes, by some misnomer, this, their capital province, came to be called ‘Irāḳ ‘Ajamī, or Persian ‘Irāḳ, a name that was totally unknown to the earlier Arab geographers. Hence in after days Al-‘Irāḳayn, ‘The Two ‘Irāḳs,’ were taken to mean Media and Lower Mesopotamia, which last for distinction was thenceforth called Arabian ‘Irāḳ — ‘Ir¯ḳ ‘Arabī. Originally, it is to be observed, Al-‘Irāḳayn had been a term applied to the two great cities of (Arabian) ‘Irāḳ, namely, Kūfah and Baṣrah; but the Saljūḳs had affected the title of Sulṭān of the Two ‘Irāḳs, which in consequence, as explained above, came to be applied to the two provinces, but as Abu-l-Fidā (p. 408) writes “among the vulgar,” and wrongfully (see also Yāḳūt, ii, 15, and Lane, Dictionary, s.v. ‘Irāḳ). The name, however, has continued in use down to the present time.

Among the ancient monuments of India, few are of more interest than the tōps or stūpas at Sāñchi - Kānākheḍā, about 5½ miles south-west from Bhelsā or Bhilsā, in the Gwāliar territory, and some 20 miles north-east of the capital of the Bhopāl State. There is now a railway station close to the spot, and most of the trains stop there. The various notices of the remains here are scattered in numerous publications, and some notice of them may perhaps be usefully combined with the history of the stūpas since their discovery.

The description of Kurdistān given by Mustawfi (which Ḥājji Khalfah has copied almost verbatim into his Jihān Numā) presents a number of small problems which I find myself unable satisfactorily to solve. Kurdistān, or the Land of the Kurds, is not mentioned by the earlier Arab geographers, and it appears to have been first erected into a separate government under the Saljūḳs, who, in the time of Sulaymān Shah, divided it off from the rest of the Jibāl Province, which they called Persian ‘Irāḳ, as explained in Chapter 2. Sulaymān Shāh, under whose rule Kurdistān appears to have flourished greatly, surnamed Abūh (or Ayūh) was the nephew of Sultan Sinjar, who had appointed him governor of this province, and Sulaymān Shāh at a later date—that is, from 554 to 556 (1159 to 1161 a.d.)—became for a short time the Saljūḳ Sultan of the Two ‘Irāḳs, and chief of his house.

When discussing the position of Kuśinagara I was compelled by the necessity of avoiding undue prolixity to assume without proof the correctness of the current belief that the ancient and famous city of Vaisāli (Vesāli) is now represented by the ruins at Basāṛ and the neighbouring villages in the Muzaffarpur District of North Bihār.

Mayyāfārīqīn, like many a Moslem city, was not without its historian, but hitherto he has been a name only—Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqi—known to us by the quotations from his history in the biographies of Ibn Khallikān. Now, however, the British Museum has acquired a nearly complete copy of the Ta'rīkh Mayyāfāriqīn, Or. 5,803. Its date of composition is 572 a.h. The MS. is written in a good hand, and wascopied probably at Damascus, and in the seventh century of the Hijra. It contains 200 folios of about twenty-two closely written lines a side: the first eight folios, to 17 a.h., are wanting; a gap, covering the years 567–9, follows folio 194, and the years 571–2 are wanting at the end.

In the year 1889 the late Mr. H. H. Dhruva published an edition of the Mugdhāvabodhamauktika, which he described as “a Grammar for Beginners of the Gujerati Language”. He cannot have given much study to the work, for a perusal of it will show that it is not a Gujarātī Grammar at all. It is a very elementary Sanskrit Grammar, with the explanations written in an old form of Gujarātī. The date of the work is a.d. 1394, and all that is known of the author is that he was the pupil of Deva-sundara. His name is not given. As a Sanskrit Grammar the Mugdhāvabodhamauktika is of very small value. It deals more with what we should call syntax than with the formation of words. But, as the explanations are written in the vernacular, these incidentally afford information as to what was the condition of the language of Gujarat between the time of Hema-candra (fl. 1150 a.d.) and the time of Narsingh Mehṭā (fl. 1450 a.d.), with whom Gujarātī literature is commonly said to commence. I have therefore examined the text with some minuteness, and lay the results before the Royal Asiatic Society, as providing a valuable connecting link between the Gaurjara Apabhraṁśa of the Prakrit grammarian and modern Gujarātī. The close connection of this Old Gujarātī with the former is remarkable; and, though the materials are very incomplete, we are entitled to say that for the first time we have before us an unbroken chain of development between a Prakrit dialect and a modern Indian vernacular.

The Vrācaḍa Apabhraṁśa form of Prakrit was spoken in Sindh.1 We know very little about it, except that amongst its peculiarities were (1) the optional change of initial ta and da to ṭa and ḍa respectively; (2) the change of ṣa and sa to śa; and (3) the prefixing of y to c and j.

It has already been mentioned that, according to Ṣafadi, a correspondence on Vegetarianism between Abu’l - ‘Alā and a certain Hibat Allah Ibn Mūsā, due to a line in the former's Luzūmiyyāt, was excerpted by Yāḳūt. The first volume of Yāḳūt's precious Dictionary of Littérateurs is in the Bodleian Library, soon, I hope, to be published with such other volumes of it as can be found. Yāḳūt, whose acquaintance with literary history was unique, tells us that a passage in the Falak al-Ma‘ānī of Ibn al-Habbāriyyah had roused in him the desire to get at this correspondence, which he reproduces in an abridged form. Abu’l-‘Alā's correspondent was a man of some importance, whose grave was still shown in Maḳrizi's time in Cairo, where he held the post of Chief Missionary. The fact that Abu’l-‘Alā addresses him with the titles ra’īs and ajall shows that he held this or some similar post at the time of the correspondence.

It is very generally a matter of complaint that the lithographed editions of Persian and Arabic works published in the East are, for the most part, unprovided with any index or full table of contents; and, further, that when the book treats of geography or history, the proper names of both persons and places are too often given in a manner that at first sight defies identification. Half a loaf, however, is proverbially better than no bread, and, until from some quarter funds are forthcoming to defray the cost of printing Persian texts in Europe, scholars would often be able to make use of the editions lithographed in India or elsewhere, if the true reading of the proper names were fixed by a collation of the best manuscripts, and if a full table of contents were available for purposes of reference. In many cases also a Persian work will only contain one part, or a series of chapters, that pre-eminently is of interest to Western scholars: and the remark, of course,- applies more especially to the Cosmographies where the geographical chapters alone are of first-rate importance, as also to those numerous Universal Histories where only the concluding sections, dealing with the author's own time, can in any way be considered as of primary authority.

There is in the British Museum a Persian MS., Or. 5,849, which is a translation of an Arabic treatise by Albīrūnī. It is a small quarto containing 175 folios, and at one time belonged to one of the Oude royal libraries, and has several red impressions of seals. It was picked up by me in Lakhnau, in 1899. The MS. is a materia medica, and contains accounts of drugs, vegetable and mineral, in alphabetical order. Its title is Kitāb-i-ṣaidanah, and the translator discusses at some length the origin of this name. Albīrūnī was inclined to derive it from the Indian chandan and the Persian chandal, sandalwood, but this etymology is rejected by the translator. There is a long preface by the translator, and as it is in very high-flown language, and as the MS. is much worm-eaten, it is not very easy to understand his meaning. However, we learn from p. 2b that the translator's name was Abū-bakr, son of ‘Ali, son of Umān Asfaru’l-kāsānī, and further on we find that he came to India in the beginning of amsu-d-dīn Īltatmi's reign, or in the last year of his predecessor and father-in-law, Qubu-d-dīn Aibak, and consequently about 607 A.H. (1211 A.D.). He speaks of staying in Dihlī for eighteen months.

His full name and title ran as-Sulṭánu'l-A'dham Mu'izzu'd-Dunyá wa'd-Din Abu'l-Ḣárith Sinjar b. Maliksháh Burhánu Amiri'l-Múminín. His motto (tawqí') was . His prime ministers were Mu'ínu'd-Dín Mukhtaṣṣ of Káshán, Shihábu'd-Dín Abu'l-Maḥásin b. al-Faqíhu'1-ajall (nephew of the Nidhámu'l-Mulk), Sharafu'd-Dín Abú Ṭáhir Mámísá of Qum, Yaghán b. al-Káshgharí, Qiwámu'd-Dín Abu'l-Qásim, and Náṣiru'd-Dín Ṭáhir b. Fakhru'1-Mulk. His chamberlains were the Amír Ghuzughlú cf. Bundárí, p. 185, 1.16, which has , Ḥusayn al-Ḥájib, Nidhámu'd-Dín Maḥmud of Káshán, and Falaku'd-Dín ‘Alí Chatrí (cf. Bundárí, p. 225,1. 1).

I would beg to be allowed to correct the somewhat misleading description of MS. No. 29 of the Maxwell Bequest of Malay Books which was published in my provisional list of them printed in Part I of the Society's Journal for 1899. I was misled by the first few pages of the book, which consist of a rather elaborate list of languages, into supposing that the MS. contained vocabularies of all of them: having identified a few, I assumed, somewhat too hastily, that the rest were also represented there.

In the last sentence of my paper on Part I of the ufrān (J.R.A.S., October, 1900) I described the Second Part as “more difficult, but also more characteristic and interesting.” Further study has led me somewhat to modify this view. It is more difficult to read, because the scribe, hastening to the goal, drove his pen furiously. On the first reading a good deal of it seemed to me almost hopeless, but a closer acquaintance has removed not a few of these stumbling-blocks, and I am convinced that only patience and determination are needed to remove all, or nearly all, that are left. If indeed Abū'l-‘Alā had always written as he writes in the section to which this article is mainly devoted, his readers would have no cause for complaint: it comprises many anecdotes and comparatively little rhetoric ; hence it is, beyond doubt, less difficult than any other section of the Risāla. Unfortunately, these twenty or thirty pages are but an oasis in the surrounding desert. Elsewhere Abū'l-‘Alā seldom escapes from his artificial prose with its forced metaphors and tyrannous rhymes. The passages of which I have attempted a, translation, on pp. 127–129 and 161–163, may serve to illustrate his typical manner. But on the whole, when account is made of the large number of scattered anecdotes, the Second Part is scarcely equal in difficulty to the First. That it is more characteristic will be admitted, in the sense that it is more personal.

In the pages of this Journal I have repeatedly had occasion to insist, especially in my notice of M. Blochet's most useful Catalogue (J.R.A.S. for 1901, pp. 331–3), on the unique value of the magnificent collection of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish MSS. formed by the late M. Charles Schefer, and now belonging to the Bibliothèque Nationale. During a fortnight spent in Paris in the Easter vacation of 1901, I was able to examine more closely some of the most interesting MSS. comprised in this collection, and in particular the MS. which forms the subject of this notice, which is remarkable alike for its age (it is dated the beginning of Ramaḍán, A.H. 635 = April, A.D. 1238); its fine, clear, careful script; the interest and authority of its contents; and the fact that it is, so far as I have been able to ascertain, unique.

Since writing the letter on this subject which appears in the January number of the J.R.A.S. I have examined the British Museum MS. Or. 3,248 more carefully, and have obtained a clue to its authorship. Dr. Rieu and Professor Denison Ross considered the work to be anonymous, and regarded the name at the end—Muḥammad ‘Alī, son of Nūra—as being probably that of the owner or copyist. I am inclined to think that it is the name of the author, and that the work is more recent and less valuable than has hitherto been supposed. No doubt the writer has used some old records, and it would appear from a marginal note that a manuscript called the Qissa Ṣafavi, and which seems to have been lost, was the basis of the work. It is also likely that he used the TārīkhShāhī of Abdullah Marwārid, but I think that Or. 3,248 cannot have been put together earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century. We know from Mr. Denison Ross's paper in the J.R.A.S. for April, 1896, that the work must have been composed, in whole or in part, after 946 A.H. (or 1539), as it records the death of Muḥammad Zamān Mīrzā, which occurred in that year during the flight after Humāyūn's defeat at Causā by Sher Shāh. But there are two marginal notes in the manuscript which have hitherto escaped notice, and which show, I think, that the work must have been written at a still later period, and also that the author did not expect or intend that he should remain anonymous. These notes are not perfectly intelligible, for the margins have been clipped in binding (before the MS. came into the Museum), and consequently some important words are missing, but their general purport can be understood.

As for āliḥ b. ‘Abdu’l-Ḳuddūs, though his zandaḳa has become notorious, he did not avow it (and knowledge belongs to God alone) until he was convicted out of his own mouth. The following verses are ascribed to his father, ‘Abdu’l-Ḳuddūs: How many a visitor hath Mecca brought to perdition! May God raze Mecca and her houses!May the Merciful refuse sustenance to her living inhabitants, P 149. and may Mercy roast her dead [in hell-fire]!