It is very improbable that the Mahmal, which formed such a prominent object in the procession of the “Kiswat en Nebi” at Cairo and the pilgrim caravans from Egypt and Syria, will be seen in the Hejaz again.

There are very strong political and religious reasons against its introduction into the ceremonies at Mecca. As the practice of sending a Mahmal to Mecca was adopted by an Indian Prince and the late Sultan of Darfur, it might be of use to trace the origin and purport of this very curious custom in Islam.

Maghribī or Moorish documents on the theory of music are extremely rare. We certainly have the Commentary on Aristotle's De anima by Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), but that deals with the question of the physical basis of sound, and not with practical theory. Probably the latter is treated in the Kitāb al adwār al-mansūb attributed to Ibn Sab'īn (d. 1269), but this is, unfortunately, locked away in a private library in the East. We also have the treatise bearing the name of Al-Shalāḥi (ca. 1301) known as the Kitāb al-imtā' wa'lintifā', and the chapter on music in the mugaddima of the Kitāb al-'ibarof Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), but they tell us very little. The former is mainly concerned with the question of the “lawfulness” of music, whilst the latter is too general in its treatment to be of much use, and tells us nothing about practical theory.

1. Among the less common Chinese decorative or symbolic themes is one whose norm may reasonably be regarded as a semi-circle terminating at each end in an animal's head. But arcs of the circle both less and more than the half are perhaps more frequent, and the curvature is likewise bent, as the applicational needs demand, into other modes of arch or loop. Instances of penannular bracelets and torques in other lands are perhaps also derivatives when their terminals are thus enriched.

The formula of the Muhammadan declaration of faith (ash-shahādah or, more exact, ash-shahādatāni) (1) when recited on more solemn occasions, is presumably mostly to this effect:—

The preceding article of this series will be found in the Journal for 1930, page 761. Mr. Elsberg has kindly supplied photographs and descriptions of the following Abbasid and Fatimid pieces in his collection, and Mr. S. Flury has to be thanked for assistance with the readings of the inscriptions:—

No. 1. Collection No. 1749.

Fragment of a garment of glazed linen, counting about fifty warp threads to the inch. The inscription is embroidered in red silk, in a cross stitch. 14½ × 22¼ inches. The inscription is ⅜ inch wide. From the excavations at Fustât.

Ishme-Dagan, fourth king of the Isin dynasty, reigned twenty years (2237–18), but concerning the history of his reign little is known. He appears in all known references to him as “the god Ishme-Dagan”, in accordance with the prevalent custom of emperor-worship in the periods of the third dynasty of Ur and the succeeding dynasties of Isin and Ellasar. Although all the fifteen kings of Isin and the fourteen kings of Ellasar have Semitic names, and both dynasties are certainly Semitic, their religion was Sumerian; the deification and worship of kings are characteristic of Sumerian religion, and fundamentally opposed to Semitic religious conceptions.

In a previous article I have connected Sanskrit and Pali bharu “sea” and Pali maru “desert”, “sand-desert”, and have shown that these words were probably borrowed by Indo-Aryan from one or several non-Aryan languages. Malay baroh denotes “low-lying country”, “sea-shore”, “sea”. The dialects of the Malay Peninsula have baruh “plain”, “flatland”, baruk, barok “shore”, and bâruh “sea”. Sometimes the initial is reduced. In Bahnar âr denotes “marsh”, “swampy district”, or “low-lying damp terrain near to watercourses”. Annamite has preserved the initial, but the final liquid has become i: *bar > bai “coast”, “shore”, “strand”.

It has been suggested by Dr. Belvalkar that the original commentary on the Sāṁkhya Kārikā, which was translated by Paramārtha into Chinese, was none other than the Māṭhara-Vṛtti and that such differences as there are between the two are not different in kind from the variations between different recensions, such as the Chinese and the Japanese. He cites several instances of agreement between the Chinese commentary and the Māṭhara-Vṛtti, one of the most notable of these being the initial story of how Kapila came to impart the teaching to Āsuri. A closer examination of the two commentaries would, however, seem to reveal certain doctrinal differences of some importance, variations such as seem not to be susceptible of being explained away on the basis of differences of version. These differences throw considerable doubt on the possibility of the Māṭhara-Vṛtti having been the original translated by Paramārtha. It is the object of this paper to set out the results of a fairly full analysis made by the present writer. While no positive conclusion is possible, it would appear that Professor Keith's suggestion of both commentaries having drawn from some common original is, perhaps, the most plausible view.

The Nyāya-praveśa by Śaṅkarasvāmin, recently printed in the Gaekwad's Oriental Series of Baroda, is a text of great interest for the study of Indian logic; in fact, in spite of its conciseness it contains an extremely clear exposition of the Buddhist logic as it was taught in India, at least among some particular schools, as those of the Yogācāras and the Sautrāntikas in that lapse of time which separates Diṅnāga from Dharmakīrti. That the book was written after Diṅnāga, but before Dharmakīrti, is proved by its peculiarities, which in many a point differentiate the theories held by the author from those maintained by the other two great logicians already quoted.

The translation and publication of this article have been unavoidably delayed by the pressure of other work. For typographical reasons the Sakai words, written originally in the Anthropos alphabet, have been transcribed into the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association, and an explanation of some of the symbols used may be helpful.

The Taittīnya-Āraṇyaka mentions, for the first time, the various constituents of the ancient science of phonetics:

Prap. vii, An. 2.

At the present day no Śikṣā work contemporaneous with the above and comprising all the said parts is to be traced. In general, the Prätiśākhyas and the still later Śikṣās deal at sufficiently great length with traditional Sanskrit phonetics of their own times; but the common source from which Patañali derived most of his quotations, which was afterwards used by Candragomin to form his Varṇa-sūtras, and which has been extensively quoted and reproduced by subsequent commentators of such high repute as Jayāditya, Jinendrabuddhi, the author of Prakriyā-Saṅgraha of the Jain Śākaṭāyana School, Sṣṭridhara and a host of others, was little known till recent times.