Im Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oktober, 1926, hat Hannes Skoeld eine Arbeit “Sur la lettre en langue Mitanni” veröffentlicht.

Ich bekenne, dass ich kein Bedürfnis fühle, darauf zu antworten, denn was Skoeld schrieb, kann nur sckreiben, wer der Frage der Entzifferung unbekannter Sprachen sehr ferne steht, d.h. also, wer über meine Mitani-Studien kein Urteil haben kann. Aber zu Nutze und Frommen der Anderen, gerade derer, die sich darüber kein Urteil anmassen, und die doch aus den Aeusserungen scheinbar oder wirklich Urteilsberechtigter sich allmählich selbst ein Urteil erfühlen wollen, halte ich es doch für meine Pflicht zu antworten. Es soll möglichste Klarheit gewonnen werden, damit die Sache gefördert werde.

All things must come to an end, and this series of papers, now running for ten years, is herewith concluded. This final instalment consists of an index, enabling a reader to find at once any character discussed in the series, with the year of the Journal and the page in the latter where the character appears. Naturally the years cannot pass without disclosing much that could be added or improved or qualified. But remembering that he who begins by revising may end by rewriting, I have left these studies as they were published in the Journal.

17. Ch. 0021 (670, vol. xxxi, foil. 115; verso of fol. 2 of a text in dbu-can script; 11. 8 of clear dbu-med).

The late Professor Buehler, in his admirable work on Indian palæography, points to the name of an old species of writing, otherwise unknown, called the puṣkarasārī or pukkharasāriyā, and mentioned by Buddhist and Jain authors. He quite correctly connects this name with that of Puṣkara° or Pauṣkarasādi, an old authority mentioned by some grammarians, Āpastamba, etc. But as far as I am aware, neither Buehler nor any other scholar has gone further into the possible problems connected with this name. Becoming slightly interested in this question, I tried to make a collection of the few passages mentioning Pauṣkarasādi, which are, unfortunately, not very illuminating. Still it may not be wholly out of the way to present here the meagre outcome of my investigations.

British Museum MS. Or. 8193 was presented to the Museum on the 18th July, 1918, by one of our members, Mr. R. S. Greenshields (I.C.S., retd.). It had been purchased by him at a sale held on behalf of the British Red Cross Society in London on 22nd April, 1918. I understand that the MS. was presented to the British Red Cross Society by Sir Douglas Seton Steuart, in whose family it had been for many years. It was no doubt brought from India by one of the donors' ancestors, whose name, “The Honble. A. Seton, Esq.,” is written on the fly-leaf in a hand which recalls the late eighteenth century. A note in the same hand on the first folio of the MS. states that it is in the “ancient pehlawee character” (a statement apparently founded on a similar note in Persian on the margin of the recto of the second folio) and that “according to another information … a certain religious person, Mohummud Moostukeem of Nornawl, intimated that this book had been presented to him by one of his pupils in the reign of Mohummud Shah (i.e. between a.d. 1719 and 1748), but no one can read it. Also in the time of the Nawab Feiz Gullub Khan it had been presented to the inspection of a learned Molawee of Delhie, who could not read it, but judged the writing to be in the ancient Cuffic character.” The only other evidence of the history of the MS. which appears to survive is a note in Persian written in the field of the miniature on folio 87v, as follows:—

The late Monsieur Henri Cordier's parting gift to students of the East was his edition of the Mirabilia of the Dominican Brother Jordan of Sévérac. This was nothing less than a complete facsimile of the unique manuscript of the Mirabilia which is now in the British Museum. The facsimile is accompanied with an Introduction, a French translation and notes, and a transcript of the Latin text. The transcript is little more than a copy of that of 1839, and students will be wise to read the Latin text from the facsimile. But it is not my purpose here to review or criticize the book. Cordier, like Yule before him, thought it worth while to print in addition to the Mirabilia such other fragments of Jordan's writing as survive. Yule published versions of two letters by Jordan in Cathay and the Way Thither, 1866, and Cordier prints the Latin text of these same letters (one of them twice over) in his Notes Préliminaires and adds to them two texts of another letter which is attributed first to Bartholomew, Custos of Tauris, and secondly to Francis of Pisa. All these texts are taken at second-hand from the Biblioteca Bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa by G. Golubovich, O.S.F. These four letters, which may in fact be reduced to two and part of a third, are concerned with the martyrdom of four Franciscan Brothers at Tana near Bombay in April, 1321. This martyrdom seems to have roused extraordinary interest at the time.