With the exception of a casual mention by one of the ancient historians, nothing appears to have been known by the outside world, of the Andamanese; until Lieut. Blair, of the Indian Navy, was conducting a survey of the Andaman Islands at the close of the last century. A settlement was during his time temporarily established, first in the present Port Blair, then called Port Cornwallis, and afterwards in the present Port Cornwallis. This was, however, abandoned in a short time, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate, and with the exception of the reports of the masters of vessels, who from time to time touched at the Islands, and described the aborigines as ferocious cannibals of hideous aspect, and smeared with clay, nothing more was known of them until Dr. Mouatt, by order of Lord Canning, then Governor-General of India, went down to see about establishing a convict settlement there, and his work on the subject is the first really reliable authority we have. It is, however, necessarily far from being correct, as in a hasty tour round the Islands much information could not be gained, and, as I have often found, the first information one receives of these people is generally wrong.

Chapter XVI.—Marco Polo travelled from Yazd to Kermán viâ. Báfk. His description of the road, seven days over great plains, harbour at three places only, is perfectly exact. The fine woods, producing dates, are at Báfk itself. (The place is generally called Báft.) Partridges and quails still abound; wild asses I saw several on the western road, and I was told that there were a great many on the Báfk road. Travellers and caravans now always go by the eastern road viâ Anár and Bahrámábád. Before the Sefavíehs (i.e. before A.D. 1500) the Anár road was hardly, if ever, used; travellers always took the Báfk road. The country from Yazd to Anár, 97 miles, seems to have been totally uninhabited before the Sefavíehs. Anár, as late as A.D. 1340, is mentioned as the frontier place of Kermán to the north, on the confines of the Yazd desert. When Sháh 'Abbás had caravanserais built at three places between Yazd and Anár (Zein ud-dín, Kermánsháhán, and Shamsh), the eastern road began to be neglected.

In the thirteenth century A.D. the Muhammadan religion spread from India to the Malay Archipelago. Many centuries before, the commerce which was carried on between India and the Eastern Islands had been the means of familiarizing the inhabitants of the latter with the tenets of Brahmanism. These had taken root among them, at all events, wherever monarchies were established on the Hindu pattern, and had, to some extent, modified the nature or demon-worship which had previously been the sole religion of the Malay tribes. When the religion of Muhammad was established in the western regions, from which commercial intercourse was carried on with the Eastern Archipelago, it made its way gradually eastward. The Hindu rulers of petty Malay States in Sumatra and in the Peninsula of Malacca became converts, and the movement spread thenceforward uninterruptedly. At the present day all the Malay communities in reasonably accessible localities have embraced the Muhammadan religion. Some have been Muslims for centuries; among others, the adoption of this faith has been a comparatively recent event. Some Malay races, like the Dayaks of Borneo and the Battaks of Sumatra, still cling to their primitive beliefs and customs.

In the year 1848, I read before a Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society one of my earliest Essays on Indian Antiquities, relating to “the Dynasty of the Sáh kings of Surashtra.”

These inscriptions were found among the rubbish surrounding the Great Temple at Buddha-Gayâ; this rubbish had accumulated during the progress of the alterations and improvements carried out by the Burmese deputation who visited the Temple in 1877. Quoting from p. 65 of Dr. Rajendralála Mitra's work on Buddha Gayâ. we learn “that certain Burmese gentlemen, deputed by his Majesty the King of Burmah, arrived at Buddha Gayâ, at the beginning of 1877, and with the sanction of the Mahant, who is the present owner of the Great Temple and the surrounding ground, carried on demolitions and excavations round the temple, which in a manner swept away most of the old land-marks. The remains of the vaulted gateway in front of the temple had been completely demolished and the place cleared out and levelled. The stone pavilion over the Buddhapad had been dismantled and its materials cast aside on a rubbish mound at a distance. The granite plinth beside it had been removed. The sites of the chambers brought to light by Major Mead had been cleared out. The drain-pipe and gargoyle which marked the level of the granite pavement had been destroyed. The foundations of the old buildings noticed by Hiouen Thsang around the Great Temple had been excavated for bricks and filled up with rubbish. The revetment wall round the sacred Bodhi tree had been rebuilt on a different foundation on the West.

Ráma Dása Sena, the Zemindár of Berhampore, well known to Sanskrit scholars in Europe by bis Aitihesika Rahasya or essays on Sanskrit literature (in Bengalî), not being able to join the Oriental Congress, to which he had personally been invited, has sent the following verses to be read at the Congress. The English translation has been made by Mr. Shyâmaji Krishnavarmâ, of Balliol College.—Ed. J.R.A.S.

When the paper was read at a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, some exceptions were taken to it by Lord Stanley of Alderley. A report of these has been added to the report of the paper in the pages of the Society's Journal, and may possibly give occasion for doubt on a subject which I think of much importance to Mohammedans in British India and even of some to the Government itself. I therefore propose to answer the exceptions in detail and at some length. But it seems necessary, for the better understanding of them, that I should first state briefly the principles on which the argument of the paper was founded.

In the Article on Kawi, In Journ. E.A.S. Vol. XIII. Part I.

p. 42, 1. 8, instead of nyuh read ñuh.