The stone which bears this inscription was discovered, about two years ago, in the wall which, surrounds the city of Jodhpur, near the Merta gate. It was probably brought from the neighbourhood, when the fortifications of Jodhpur were completed, during the reign of Bakht Singh, about the middle of last century. As is shown by the fact that in the present position of the stone the lower lines of the writing are uppermost, little or no notice was then taken of the inscription which it contains.

The question of caste, with a branch of which I am to deal, is, I need hardly observe, the most important of all social subjects connected with India. As the most prominent feature in the organization of the community, it enters into every ramification of the administration, and these, as we all know, are many. As admittedly the mainstay of the religious belief of the majority of the population, it has received a place in the sacred lore of the priesthood such has been given to no similar institution in any other known system; and on this consideration, therefore, it has been discussed for the last century and more with all the scholarship and power of laborious investigation that are associated with the great names that adorn the roll of the Asiatic Society.

The collection of Persian manuscripts preserved in the Cambridge University Library is, compared with the collections of the British Museum or the Bodleian, sadly insignificant both in extent and value. The total number of volumes which it comprises scarcely exceeds 300, and of these only a small proportion is of any conspicuous worth or interest. Some few, however, there are which deserve to be made known to Orientalists, and amongst these is the manuscript which forms the subject of the present notice.

A peculiarly interesting feature of this Jātaka is the fact that it has undoubtedly been depicted on the western gateway of the Sanchi Tope (Figure 1 in Plate xxxvi. of Fergusson's “Tree and Serpent Worship”), and will illustrate what curiously erroneous theories may be evolved from imperfect data. I feel convinced that a complete knowledge of the Jātaka and other stories current in. Buddhist literature would enable one to explain most of the scenes depicted on these and other Buddhist ruins. That trees and serpents were, and are, largely worshipped is not to be denied, but I think it will be clearly seen from this and other plates that Fergusson did not draw correct deductions regarding the Sanchi and Amravati Topes. In his second edition he admits this.

The story of Ráma is one that has fascinated all generations of Hindus, and is full of interest for us. Apart, however, from its charm as a story, it presents a picture of ancient India, which is in many respects unique, and suggests perplexing questions of history, mythology, social life, topography, etc. Many of those questions permit of endless debate and little solid result, for there is no firm ground to rest upon, but the geographical questions are in a better position. India has been surveyed most accurately and completely, and we know that what it is now, it was in ancient times, except that changes have occurred in the courses of some rivers in the plains of North India; and these changes may often be detected. There is plenty of the fabulous in Hindu geography, but it is confined, as a rule, to outside lands, and the allusions to purely Indian topography are generally sober. The main features of the country were adequately known in very early times. The Aryans were well acquainted with all North India as far as the confines of Bengal proper, and the chief mountains and rivers of South India were known. Wars and caravans (of which we have a graphic instance in the story of Nala), helped greatly in opening out new territories as in all lands and ages, but it was the religious ascetics who were the pioneers in discovery, and who appear to have contributed most to a knowledge of the country.

The interesting and scholarly volume of Mr. McCrindle, recently published by A. Constable and Co., invites an attempt to settle more precisely the line on which Alexander reached the bank of the Indus. Mr. McCrindle loses the clue when Alexander reaches Nikaia. This place he is inclined to fix somewhere near Bagraâm, and he thinks that a part of Alexander's troops then passed through the Khaibar to the district called Peukelaôtis, somewhere near Hashtnagar on the river Landai. The formation of the country makes such a course improbable; but Mr. McCrindle admits that the geography of Kâfiristân, Chitrâl, and Swât is too little known to enable him to trace the course of the Macedonian army at this point. I will here try to supply that information.

The following two passages of the Brhaddevatā occur in afourteenth century Poona MS. of Sadguruçisya, which I collated for my edition of the Sarvānukramanī and its commentary. The MS. is described in pages xii. and xiii. cf the introduction to that edition. It is there termed P I, but below referred to simply as P. These two extracts were not printed in my edition, because they occurred in none of the other MSS. of Sadguruçisya, and were at the same time too long to incorporate in the notes. I now edit these old Vedic myths both as containing matter of some interest and as likely to be of use to a future editor of the Brhadde-vatā.

A lingering illness, ending with a premature death, prevented the late Dr. Bhagvânlâl Indrâjî from completing. his article on one of his most important discoveries, the inscriptions on the Mathurâ Lion Pillar. What he had written, or rather dictated to his assistant—a transcript as well as Sanskrit and English translations, together with some notes—was sent after his death to England, with the sculpture (now in the British Museum), and made over for publication to the Royal Asiatic Society. With the permission of the Society's Council, I have undertaken to edit these materials, and thus for the last time to perform a task which I have performed more than once for my lamented friend's papers during his lifetime. In doing this I have compared Dr. Bhagvânlâl's transcript first with the originals on the stone, and afterwards again with an excellent paper impression, presented to me by Dr. James Burgess in 1889. The collation has made necessary some alterations in the transcript and in the translation, among which the more important ones have been pointed out in the notes. But I may confidently assert that all really essential points have been fully settled and explained by Dr. Bhagvânlâl, whose great acumen and scholarship are as conspicuous in his interpretation of these inscriptions as in his other epigraphic publications. For convenience's sake I have prefixed an introduction, summarizing the chief results deducible from the inscriptions.

The subjoined list of words is founded mainly on those of B. H. Hodgson, but certain omissions and additions have been made, with the object of showing only those words in common use which experience teaches are not easily altered or changed in the times of “storm and stress” through which most of the wilder tribes of Burma are passing, or which they have undergone at some previous stage of their history. In few parts of the world, indeed, has tribal conflict been more incessant than amongst the Mongoloid hillmen of S.E. Asia, or the conditions more favourable for the disintegration of old and the formation of new languages and dialects,—hence the multiplication of the latter so frequently remarked on by philologists.

Since the publication of my last paper on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van (J.R.A.S. Jan. 1893) a discovery of considerable importance has taken place. In 1890 Mr. de Morgan, now Director of the Service of Antiquities in Egypt, succeeded, at the risk of his life, in taking a squeeze of the inscription on the pillar of Keli-shin Ushnei, which I have described in the first part of this Memoir (J.R.A.S. XIV. p. 66, No. LVI.). He found that there was engraved upon the stele, not only the Vannic text which I have published, but also an Assyrian text which had never been noticed before.

[Since the publication in this Journal of Paṇḍit Bhagvānlāl's article on the Western Kshatrapas, a period of no less than four years has elapsed. The delay in issuing this, the final portion of his notes, is due to the fact that a study of these notes convinced me of the impossibility of publishing them in anything like their original form; and my task was postponed, until Dr. Bühler most generously undertook to revise the most important part of the Paṇḍit's work, viz. that which deals with the inscriptions engraved on the Lion Capital. Dr. Bühler's results, which are published in another article in the present number, have enabled me to deal with the rest of the work. While I have been obliged to omit some portions and to correct others, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to give a concise and connected exposition of the Paṇḍit's own views.

The Lāmas always say Grace before food or drink. Most of these Graces are curiously blended with demonolatry, though they always are pervaded by universal charity and other truly Buddhistic principles. And they throw some light on the later Mahāyāna ritual of Indian Buddhism, from which they are alleged to have been borrowed.

The Khaláṣat-at-Tawáríkh is a history of India from the days of the Pandus and Kurus down to the defeat of Dárá Shikoh and the beginning of the reign of Aurangzeb. It was written two hundred years ago (1695–96) by an upcountry Hindu, whose name has been variously given as Sanjan, Suján, Saján, Shuján, and Subhán Rái. He does not name himself in his history, but he tells us that he was a native of Batála, in the Panjáb, and that he had been from his youth up in the employment of high officials as a munshi or secretary. Apparently he was a kshatriya by caste, but in my opinion he was almost, if not quite, a Sikh by religion.

The present paper brings the much despised Mahāyāna form of Buddhism fully home to the very cradle-land of Buddhism in India, and invests itwith unexpected importance in the history of Indian Buddhism.

No one has yet realized the vast extent to which Mahāyāna and Tāntrik Buddhist remains cover India; nor sufficiently realized the leading part played by the Mahāyāna in Indian Buddhism during its most popular period.

In support of the theory set forth in the pages of this Journal (Part III. 1890, Art. IX.) that the Chinese classics, supposed to have been brought to light again towards the close of the second century b.c., were probably forged at that time, it would be advisable to give a literal translation of the first few chapters of the Historical Records by the great historian Ssŭma Ch'ien, written circâ b.c. 91. The introductory chapter is by Ssŭma Chêng (the ‘Lesser Ssŭma’), who lived a.d. 720, and made the Records the study of his lifetime. It is usually printed with the Records, and forms an integral part of it.

The Sutta of which the Pāli text, together with a translation, is here given is No. 82 of the Majjhima Nikāya. I have availed myself throughout of Buddhaghosa's Commentary, the Papañca-Sūdanī; but only so much of it is here reproduced, in the form of extracts, as I thought was necessary either to support a rendering, or to illustrate a point, of the text. Such extracts are marked ‘Pap. Sūd.’ I have added, at the end of the text, a few further references of general interest.

The Lāmas, as is well known, have preserved in very full form much archaic Indian lore, now otherwise imperfectly known or altogether lost. And a valuable feature of such Lāmaist literature is the frequent use of bilingual names, where the Sanskrit name is supplemented by a most careful etymological translation into Tibetan, thus enabling us to fix the etymology of many of the Hindū and Buddhist mythological and historical names, regarding which vague guesses are often hazarded. These Tibetan etymologies, though not necessarily the true ones, are certainly those which over a thousand years ago were the current traditional etymologies in India. And as, even apart from etymological features, categorical lists of little known personages, mythological or prehistoric, are helpful to students of both Buddhism and Hinduism, I here give a list of Nāga Rājās from the Mahācyutpatti, in the bsTan-hgyur (Tén-gyur) section of the Lāmaist Scriptures. This list, which may be compared with that in the Vāyu Purāna, seems to include many of the Vedic terrestrial Nāga Kings, the aboriginal enemies of the primitive Aryans, whose more direct descendants are now confined chiefly to the remote hills of Nāgpur, Chhoṭa Nāgpur, etc., etc. Tibetan literature contains much information about these Nāgas, one of Buddha's titles being ‘King of the powerful Nāgas.’

The Svayambhūpurāṇa [Paris, dev. 78] is probably a literary recast of the Svayambhūpurāṇa named by copyists Vṛhat˚ and Mahāsvayambhūpurāṇa, and existing in many copies in the Paris, Cambridge, and London (A. S.) Libraries, and also in India. The topics of this work are identical, but the language is, to some extent, different, and the treatment of the matter fairly independent. The same can be said, so far as I am acquainted with the facts, about the Madhyama recension of the S. P. [London A. S. Library and Cambridge]. The number of chapters differs in the S. P. [Paris, dev. 78], and other redactions (being respectively 12, 20, and 8); prose and verse of very varied rhythm occur intermingled throughout the book, whilst, on the contrary, the Vṛhat˚ and the Mahāsvayambhūpurāṇa are both, from beginning to end, written in classic çlokas. The Mahā˚, as noticed in Bendall's Buddhist MSS. Catalogue, is only a second recension of the Vṛhat˚: all the verses of the Mahā˚, together with the prologue itself, are faithfully reproduced in the Vṛhat˚ edition, the distinctive mark of the two redactions being the separation between the first and the second chapters.