The only complete manuscript of this Chronicle of the Bohemians which is known to exist is a folio paper volume written partly in the fourteenth and partly in the early fifteenth century. My efforts to see the MS. itself have so far been unsuccessful, and the following extracts are translated from the text printed by Gelasius Dobner in his Monumenta Historica, Boemiœ nusquam antehac edita, etc., 6 tom. 4to, Pragæ, 1764…85. The Chronicle is in tom, ii, 1768, pp. 79–282. It is entitled Chronicon Reverendissimi Joannis dicti de Marignolis de Florentia Ordinis Minorum Bysinianensis Episcopi …, and begins: Incipit Processus in Cronicum Boemorum, ending, on p. 282, Et sic est finis hujus Cronice Boemorum. The MS., it should be said, was formerly in thelibrary of the Church S. Crucis majoris at Prag, and is now in the University Library in that city.

In a former paper in this Journal (1913, p. 885) I set out the kṣatriya ballad, which told of the fortunes of Satyavrata Triśaṅku, prince of Ayodhyā, as affected by the two famous rishis, Vasiṣṭha, the great priest of Ayodhyā, and Viśvaratha, king of Kānyakubja, who relinquished his kṣatriya status and became a brahman with the name Viśvāmitra. This paper carries on their story in connexion with Triśaṅku's successors.

It must come some time and it shall come now, this confession of error committed and published, and by this writing recanted. The error concerns the date of the many fragments of inscribed bones exhumed in 1899 in the Honan province of North China. Contrary to the opinions of two Chinese authorities, Liu T'ieh-yün and Lo Chên-yü, and of a great French scholar, E. Chavannes, I had in earlier papers attributed these relics to the period of the Chou dynasty. I now subscribe fully to the view of the above-named writers in holding them to be survivals from the previous Shang dynasty. Moreover, I am a convinced convert, and can proclaim my belief in the admirably candid words of the French politician, “Moi, je soutiens que la chose est ainsi; et ceux qui ne pensent pas comme moi, sont des sots, des brigands, et des assassins.”

The historical interest presented by Hymn x. 75 of the Ṛgveda, the famous Nadīatuti or “Song of the Rivers”, has been recognized ever since the critical study of Vedic literature began. The numerous ancient river-names of North-Western India therein mentioned furnish an indication more definite than can be found elsewhere of the area once occupied by, or familiar to, the Indo-Aryan people, to whom we owe the oldest literary remains of India as contained in the Vedic Saṁhitās.

In the monograph by Professor Sayce and myself, The Tablet from Yuzgat in the Liverpool Institute of Archœology (I believe the document is now in the Louvre), which forms vol. xi of the Asiatic Society Monographs (see pp. 15–19), I discussed the possibility of Kassite being a language more or less akin to Hittite. In dealing with this question, I made use of the well-known tablet discovered by the late Hormuzd Rassam in 1882, and published in transcription by Professor Fried. Delitzsch in his Die Sprache der Kossäer (Leipzig, 1884). To all appearance this important inscription has never been printed in the original character, and as its appearance is held to be desirable, I now place before the British public the copy which I made in 1882 or 1883.