“The Genius knows, that companion who controls our natal star, the god of man's nature attached to each human being's head, changeful in aspect, white and black.” With every person, family, and social group and place was connected a tutelary deity who from birth onwards controlled the destinies of the person or thing that lay under his sway, I dispensing either happiness or trouble. The word genius probably means “natal, connected by birth”, γεεθλιος, and to the Italian mind signified “the personality, the character, abstracted from the man and made into a god” (Roscher, Ausf. Lex. d. gr. u. röm. Myth., col. 1615, s.v.). These Genii were regarded as forming the proletariat or commons of the Italian gods (Seneca, Ep. 110), and the month of December was sacred to them (Ovid, Fasti III. 58). There are some traces in Italy of evil genii corresponding to these good spirits; the idea of this dualism is at bottom IE., though the rigid schematic application of it is perhaps due to later developments. In art the Genius was represented as a young man with a snake, or a snake alone. The former combination is really a kind of compound hieroglyph, in which the man's figure signifies youth or vitality and the snake stands for eternity, so that the combination means an eternal divine person, who was the guardian sprit or divine counterpart of a human being or place, quite distinct from the Manes or soul, which never could attain to divinity, and was liable to suffering after death.

The decorative art of the aborigines of the Malay Peninsula has already been described in some detail by various writers. The best known and most important of these contributions to our knowledge of the subject are those of A. Grünwedel in the Zeitschrift für Ethnohgie, Bd. xxvi, p. 141 (under the title “Die Zaubermuster der Orang-Utan”) and Bd. xxv, p. 71. In Bd. xxxi, p. 137, of the same periodical Th. Preuss enlarged on the same theme. W. W. Skeat also devoted many pages in vol. i of his Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula to this subject, and J. H. N. Evans has recently expressed his views on it in the Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums, vol. xii, part i.

Professor Langdon informs me that the prayer (K. 2407) which he edited in ZA. 36, 209 ff., is continued and completed by IV R. 21 c, col. ii, of which the first twelve lines are a duplicate of K. 2407, rev. 2–13. The context of the prayer is, accordingly, a long ritual used in connection with the building of a house. For a full discussion of the magic images mentioned in this ritual see Woolley, “Babylonian Prophylactic Figures,” in JRAS. 1926, 689 ff., where a translation of several similar ritual fragments is given by Sidney Smith.

These prayers, the text and translation of which are given below, are but a few of those I copied some time ago from tablets in the British Museum. Owing to various reasons I have been unable to publish them before.

I have revised the copies and have given full notes and mentioned all other sources dealing with the subject and I hope that my work may be of some use to those interested in that branch of study.

The Moorish traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa occupies a peculiar place in medieval geography, not only because his journeys were so extensive, exceeding in length even those of Marco Polo, but because the record of them contains such a fantastic mixture of items of information, some valuable or precise, others worthless or vague in the extreme, regarding the different cities, provinces, and distinguished men that he had seen. Everyone who has traced out his journey step by step must agree that there are serious arguments against the trustworthiness of his statements regarding several of the cities which he claimed to have visited. On the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult to substantiate the suspicions thus aroused. He was a skilful narrator, and did not himself, as is well known, write down the record of his journeys; consequently the existence of one or two errors in his account of a city or a district does not prove anything against him, since it must be allowed that his memory occasionally played him false. Besides, Ibn Battuta was a typical son of the medieval East, a fact which explains certain systematic faults in his narrative. For example, he is very inconsequent; sometimes he speaks at length of a small village, and sometimes devotes no more than one or two words to a celebrated city. Sometimes, but not always, he gives an impression of sincerity, saving frankly that he was badly treated by so-and-so, or that he was told about such and such a city or country, but did not himself visit it. For this reason one is naturally inclined to accept his word when he says that he personally visited a place.

The following translations are from the texts in my Assyrian Medical Texts for sick men suffering from diseases brought about by the “hand of a ghost”.

The relation between Bhamaha and Bhaṭṭi is very interesting. It was once believed that Bhāmaha preceded Bhaṭṭi. But Dr. Jacobi's discovery that he has borrowed Dharmakīrti's doctrines and phraseology has changed his relation to Bhaṭṭi. Not only is it now presumed that “Bhāmaha probably knew Bhaṭṭi's work”, but that he even “clumsily repeats inalmost identical terms” a verse of Bhaṭṭi. The point, however, does not appear to have been definitely settled, and a few remarks will not be deemed unnecessary in reviewing the entire question.

It is one of the curses of Central Asiatic linguistic research that no language of this meeting-place of nations can be studied without reference tothe history of its neighbours and predecessors, which often belong to entirely different linguistic families. It is therefore only persons of singular erudition, or, like ourselves, of that hardihood which is bred of ignorance, who venture to dogmatize on any really difficult question of Central Asiaticphonetics or lexicography.