The most exhaustive, if not the best known, source for the history of Shāh Isma'īl the Ṣafavī, is undoubtedly the Ḥabib-us-Siyar of Khwāndamīr. Though this large and important work has been lithographed, both in Ṭihrān and in Bombay, it is but too little known in Europe, where it has generally been regarded as a mere epitome of the Rauzat-uṣ-Ṣafā; whereas, besides being an original source for much valuable biographical and geographical matter, it contains detailed accounts of many little-known dynasties. Khwāndamīr's work is thus in many respects more interesting than the ponderous universal history of his grandfather. Now, there is a work, of which the British Museum possesses one copy, and the Cambridge University Library a second, which is devoted entirely to the biography of Shāh Isma'īl. Neither MS. bears a title nor gives any author's name, and in no part of the work have I been able to find a clue to the author's identity. MS. L bears the title , which is taken from the Epilogue, and in the very last line after we read which, according to Dr. Rieu, is most probably meant for the transcriber and not the author. The work ends with a short account of the accession of Isma'īl's son Ṭahmāsp, and with prayers for the prosperity and long life of the young prince. This would lead one to fix the completion of the history soon after the accession of Ṭahmāsp Mīrzā in a.h. 930. On the other hand, on fol. 277a of MS. L, we are told, in a momentary digression from the main narrative, that Moḥammad Zamān Mīrzā was drowned in the Ganges in the year 947, on the occasion of Humāyūn's retreat from Bengal.

Whether we possess among the numerous Buddhist books preserved in China any text translated from a Pāli original, is a question which has not as yet been quite settled. Several scholars have answered it positively or negatively, but no one until now has brought forward an undeniable fact in support of his opinion. The object of my present note is to decide this point, and to introduce to the Society a text of Pāli origin in Chinese.

The above has been written to clear up the doubtful points concerning the Chinese translation as mentioned by Prof. Rhys Davids in his Introduction to the “Milinda” II, pp. xi–xvii.

As the Swat valley, and neighbourhood, which constitute the principal portion of the old province of Udyāna, have hitherto been inaccessible for archæological research, the following rough notes (made during the little time at my disposal as Chief Political Officer with the Chitral Relief Force, and lately as Political Officer for Dir and Swat) may induce others better qualified to devote some attention to this interesting neighbourhood. They are principally connected with the travels of the Chinese pilgrim Huan Tsiang, as given in Beal's “Buddhist Records of the Western World.”

It is proposed in the present essay to give a brief outline, based on linguistic evidence only, of the state of civilization attained by the Tibeto-Burman race previous to the migration of the great Southern branch, and also to throw some light on the probable time of that migration. Of course, in all such inquiries anthropological evidence is now, and rightly, held to be a much more trustworthy guide than facts derived from the comparison of two or more languages, but results obtained from philological data alone are by no means to be altogether contemned. In the present case the geological exploration of the two countries is practically in its infancy, whilst even in Burma physical measurements of the population have not yet been systematically undertaken. It is clear, therefore, that we shall have to wait a quite indefinite time before any anthropological data are forthcoming. So far as is known, however, both the physical type and the idiosyncrasy of the two peoples are remarkably similar, and thus there is little fear that in comparing their languages we shall be trespassing against the canons of ethnology, for language and race are here, I think, nearly coterminous. All Tibetan or Burmese speaking people are not, of course, ethnically Tibetans or Burmans, but there can be no doubt that the bulk of them are, and that formerly they constituted but one race on the high plateau north of the Himalaya. The anthropological evidence, so far as it goes, points that way, whilst the linguistic evidence is overwhelming.

One day, when the disciples were discussing the various forms of wisdom peculiar to the Buddha, the Lord came into the hall and inquired what they were discussing. On being informed, he said: “Rahans, there will be no difficulty in understanding how I can now so easily overcome the opinions of Brahmans, princes, and others, bringing them to a right frame of mind, when you hear how, in a former existence as the high-born Vidhūra, on the summit of Mount Kāḷāgiri, I overcame and subdued the virulence of the Rakshasa Puṇṇaka.”

The MS. from which the text of the Nile Service is taken, is numbered Or. 4951, and is a recent acquisition of the British Museum. It consists of 69 paper leaves, measuring about 6£ ins. by 5 ins., with mostly 15 lines to a page. The quires, 7 in number, are of 10 leaves each (the last leaf being blank). The Syriac letters by which the quires are numbered are written in the middle of the lower margin, both on the last and the first page of each quire. Thus, on fol. 10b, the letter denotes the end of the first quire, and the same letter also stands on fol. 11a; the letters etc., are similarly written on foil. 20 b and 21 a, foil. 30b and 31a, etc. The only exception is the absence of the letter on fol. 61a. The style of writing, though smaller, approaches yery nearly to that of pi. xx (representing fol. 34 of Add. 14,664) in vol. iii of Wright's “Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the British Museum,” which has been assigned to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The letter “rlsh” is, with very few exceptions, written (with two dots instead of one), and the “daleth” is, as a rule, not distinguished by a dot below. There are no diacritic points below the letters, and points over the text (see the first facsimile, representing fol. 38b of the MS. chosen to exemplify some of the characteristics mentioned here)are mainly employed in the following cases:

In the July, 1895, number of this Journal I gave a description of the kingdom of Bengala (Bengal) from the pen of a Muhammadan Chinaman named Mahuan, who on account of his knowledge of Arabic was attached as Interpreter to the suite of Chêng Ho, when he made his voyages to India and other places in the Eastern seas at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

There is probably no study more fascinating to the student of historical geography during the period preceding Marco Polo than that of the Oriental maritime trade, which made Arabic enterprise the ruling element in the commercial world for centuries before the rise of the Portuguese. The ocean-trade of almost every port in those waters, which may be said to reach from the coast of Morocco in the west to that of Japan and Corea in the east, was in the hands of Arab merchants. We need not be astonished, therefore, to find that Arabic authors are the principal source of what we know, not only about the navigation of that period, but also about the ethnography of the nations with whom their countrymen had come into contact.

The latest researches on the noun in Semitic languages, in particular those of Prof. Barth and the late Prof. Lagarde, have opened up a vast field for discussion. Although starting from quite heterogeneous principles, yet, as they develop, they show many a point in common if examined more closely. The greater or lesser inclination of the student for speculative philology will lead him to devote his main interest to one of the two theories, but it will not absolve him from bestowing full attention on the other also, on account of its numerous important details. It would, however, be a delusion to think that either theory has completely solved the questions of the Semitic noun. No language allows itself to be confined by hard and fast rules, and Hebrew, like others, has developed many words which will not bear uniform treatment. In particular, words which lived in everybody's mouth, and had to undergo constant wear and tear, defy, more or less, violent attempts to force them within concise rules. An instance of those will form the object of the following remarks.

It is, I hope, never too late to acknowledge a mistake and correct a blunder. Since the appearance of my note on the Castle of Abrīḳ (see J.R.A.S. for October, 1895, p. 739), Professor De Goeje has called my attention to a passage in the “Tanbih” of Mas'ūdi, which negatives the identification of Abrīḳ with the modern Arabkir, and proves incontrovertibly that Tephrikē, of which there can be little doubt that Divrigi (or Divrik) is the present representative, must be the place which various Arab geographers describe under the name aforesaid of Abrīḳ or Abrūḳ.

Chao Ju-kua's ethnographical work, the Chu-fan-chih, consists of two parts (books, chüan). In the first part the author describes the various countries concerned in the Oriental sea-trade of his time; while the second part treats upon the foreign products brought as merchandise to China, and is followed, by way of supplement, by a detailed description of the island of Hainan, which in those days had among all the possessions of the empire risen to a high state of civilization, owing to a large number of statesmen, poets, and philosophers having spent years of their lives there in banishment during the Sung dynasty.

For upwards of twenty years the late Professor Blochmann's translation of Abul Fazl's monumental work, the Aín-i Akbarí, has remained a splendid fragment, and students have longed in vain for its completion. It is, therefore, cause for congratulation that this has at length been effected. Colonel Jarrett's scholarly translation of the remainder of the work, which has recently appeared, is fully equal in accuracy, while it is superior in grace of language, to that of his predecessor. Only those who have laboured over the intricacies of Abul Fazl's detestable style, at one time turgid and overloaded with meaningless phrases, at another so curt and jejune as to be obscure, can fully appreciate the skill and learning which Colonel Jarrett has brought to bear on the supremely difficult task of rendering his author intelligible to European readers.

The ancient kingdom of Orissa (Odra-deśa, whence Oṛeśá), strictly speaking, extended from the Kánsbáns river in the north to the Rasákuliá river near Ganjám in the south; and from the Bay of Bengal on the east far into the tangled mass of low hills in the west, in which latter direction its limits seem never to have been clearly defined. But the kings of Orissa were not satisfied with these boundaries. It is a common boast both in literature and on monuments that their kingdom stretched from the great to the little Ganges; that is to say, from the Bhágirathí (called by Europeans the Hugli or “Hooghly”) to the Godávarí. At various times different kings made good this boast by victorious campaigns, followed by temporary occupation of territory both to the north and south.

In 1894 I began the preparatory studies for an account of the later Indian Moghul system of government and administration in all its branches, being impelled by the belief that some information of the kind was a necessary introduction to a History of that period, which I had previously planned and commenced. Before I had done more than sketch out my first part, which deals with the Sovereign, the Court Ceremonial, and the elaborate system of Entitlature, I noticed the issue of a book on a part of my subject by Dr. Paul Horn. The perusal of this excellent work diverted my attention to a later section of my proposed Introduction, the subject of the Army and Army Organization; and in this way I have been led to write this portion before any of the others. Except incidentally, my paper is neither a translation nor a review of Dr. Horn's essay; and though indebted to him, as acknowledged from time to time, my study covers, in the main, quite different ground, forming a complement to what he has done, and, as I think, carrying the subject a good deal farther in several directions. Dr. Horn seems to have read chiefly the authorities for the period before Aurangzeb ‘Ālamgīr; while my reading has been confined in great measure to the reigns of Aurangzeb's successors in the period 1707–1803.

A public mosque and the tomb of the founder represent at the present day what was once a khanka, or, as it may be described, a conventual establishment for the use of Ṣũfis, erected at Cairo in the early years of the fourteenth century, by Sultan Baybars, second of the name. An earlier foundation of the same character, the first seen in Egypt, owed its existence to Saladin, who adapted to his purpose a house or mansion built in the days of the Fatimites, and known as the house of Sa'īd as-Su'ada, a designation which the existing mosque bears to the present day. Both foundations have for a long period ceased to serve the purposes for which they were erected, and, as has likewise happened to the numerous madāris or colleges founded by the Egyptian Sultans and nobles, their original destination is w ll-nigh forgotten. They are now simply classed among the public mosques of Cairo, a change from their original purpose largely due to their impoverishment, and not unlike that which has befallen many old abbey churches in England.

While travelling in Khorāsān, in 1874, Colonel (then Captain) the Honourable G. Napier reported having passed an inscription cut upon a rock near the village of Panj-Mana, seven or eight miles north of Kārdeh, on the road leading from Meshed to Kelāt-i-Nādiri. The rock was described as a block of crystalline limestone fallen from an overhanging cliff, while the writing it bore was said to be the record of a victory gained by “ Muhammad Shaibāni, the Usbeg conqueror of Bokhārā, over the unbelievers.” The languages in which it was cut were Arabic and Persian, and the date 916 of the Hijra, or 1510 a.d.