The Sanskrit-Khotanese bilingual text edited in this study is contained in the manuscript fonds Pelliot 5538. Since we are still seriously in need of bilingual texts in the elucidation of Khotanese problems, the present short text is welcome. I am deeply indebted to Professor Paul Pelliot who has most kindly and courteously given me permission to read and to publish Khotanese manuscripts of his collection.

A Precious fragment amongst the treasures in the possession of the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin contains a Sogdian “List of nations” (nāfnāmak), the edition of which I am preparing. Two names, however, call for a special study: (1) denoting a people in the Oxus-region, obviously the inhabitants of Toxāristān, and (2) ‘rkcyk, mentioned immediately after Kāšγar, Khotan, and Kučā.

It gives me great pleasure to take this occasion to thank Professor Bailey for material assistance without which this article would probably not have appeared. He has been kind enough to put at my disposition an edition of Zātspram printed in India and sent to him from there. This edition—the work of Behramgore Anklesaria—was utilized by Dr. Tavadia in proof form for his edition of the Šāyastnē-šāyast.

T A littérature syriaque est jusqu'aujourd'hui trop partiellementéditée pourqu'on puisse songer à en tirer au profit des iranistes une collection complète de Fontes comparable à celles que nous devons à, M. Gray et à M. Clemen pour les sources grecques et latines. II faut se contenter d'enregistrer les textes nouveaux au fur et à mesure de leur découverte et chercher à serrer de plus près les textes déja connus. Le travail a déjà, été amorcé par Gottheil et plus récemment par Nau qui a opéré un dépouillement assez minutieux des Acta Sanctorum publiés par Bedjan mais en dirigeant ses recherches á l'appui d'une thèse fort hasardeuse sur la transmission de l'Avesta.

It is indeed interesting to find sometimes a national practice of a people in. usage among another nation of quite different race, language, religion, culture, and habitation. This is, however, not a very rare thing if the custom in question was not forgotten, abandoned, or changed among its originators. We have numerous examples of this kind of adoption, in many countries. Amongst others I may mention some superstitious beliefs in the Muhammadan and Near Eastern countries, the origins of which can be traced to Central Asia and China.

The connection of Ait with Geography is obvious, but in the case of Persia the problem is somewhat different from that presented by other countries.

For example, the most immediate influence of the natural environment on the landscape painters is hardly of any importance in Persia, where the miniaturists present their heroes in purely imaginary surroundings, now of radiant sunny spaces, now of fantastic rocks reminding one of coral reefs.

There is no article “funeral” in the Enchclopædia of Islam so it seemed good to collect the material on this subject. The first charge on a Musulim' estate was the cost of his funeral, the provision of grave-clothes, tomb, and the expense of washing the body.

Washing

The body was washed by those nearest to the dead; normally men prepared a man for burial. “They turned up their sleeves, tucked their shirts into their belts, washed him, and wrapped him in the winding sheet.” Abū Baki was washed by his widow and Jābir b. Zaid gave orders that his widow should wash his body; this rule is generlized in al-Mudawwana.

The Zāyande Rūd, from Lenjān to the Gāv Khūnī, was regulated by an elaborate system, which is said to go back to Safavid times. This system remained in force until A.H. 1315 (shamsī, A.D. 1936), when it underwent alteration, owing to the fact that, on government orders, the cultivation of cotton was substituted in the lands watered by the Zāyande Rūd for the cultivation of rice.

The details of this regulation are found in an interesting document, popularly known as Shaikh Bahā‘ī’s ūmār, to be found in the Finance Ministry of Isfahan. The precise date of the origin of the ūmār is uncertain. The following words are written at the beginning of the document: “Written in the sealing office of the late Shah Tahmasp 923.”

Before considering the literature of Egypt of the eighteenth century, a glance at the state of the country would not be out of place. There was not such a great difference between Egypt under the Turks and under the Circassians. The Sultan sent a Turkish governor but the Amīrs, no longer the great men of earlier times, were still the rulers. The governor lived in perpetual terror of his own garrison, while the Amīrs, who had formed themselves into parties (the Ḳ¯simīs and the Fiḳārīs were the most famous), fought and intrigued with one another for power. At times the anarchy was unbearable, but street fighting seems to have been of such common occurrence that the tradesmen sometimes did not even bother to shut up their shops while it was going on. Occasionally a really strong Amir was able to prevail over the rest of his rivals for a few years and a few names of such strong men are worth mentioning, for it was under them that Egypt was able to regain some of its prosperity.

During a recent stay in Cairo, I found in the Taimūr¯ya library a manuscript copy of an interesting Ismaili work entitled Kitābu'1-Iḋāḥ wa'1-Bayān, by the Yemenite dā'i Ḥusain ibn 'Ali.

The manuscript is of 165 pages, 16 by 23 cms., in two hands—the first till p. 70, at 22 lines per page, the second pp. 71–165 at 19 lines per page. The first and last lines of each page are in red ink throughout. The copy was started by the Sharif 'Abdullah Abū Yūsuf, and completed on his death by 'Ali b. Shaikh Ibrāhīm Al-Haidarābādī. It is dated 22nd Dhu'l Hijja 1286 (= 26/3/1870), and was made by order of the chief Dā'i Al-Ḥasan b. Ismā'īl.

A Description of “World Orthography”, which is now the official manner of writing a number of languages of Africa, is to be found in the booklet Practical Orthography of African Languages published by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. The system is a phonetic one and is in most respects the same as the International Phonetic Alphabet, the chief exceptions being that j and y are used with their English values, vowel length is indicated by doubling the letter, and capital letters are provided for the use of those who consider them necessary. J. R. Firth has shown how World Orthography may be applied to Burmese and to several Indian languages, and it is the object of this article to show how it might be applied to Sinhalese.

In the year 1906 a hoard of about 10,000 coins marked with the names of Nahapāna and Śatakarṇī was found in the village of Joghaltembhi, Nāsik district, Bombay Presidency, and was described by the Rev. H. R. Scott in the JBBRAS., vol. xxii, art. xvi,pp. 223 foll.

Nahapāna is the earliest kṣatrapa known in Western India. Inscriptions in Prakrit referring to him as the ruler have been found in the Nāsik and J.unnar caves. From them it appears that his jurisdiction extended over South Gujarāt and North Mahārāṣṭra.

IT is well known that Tamil in contradistinction to other Dravidian languages does not admit of the voiced stops g, j, d, b at the beginning of a word ; whereas in the middle of a word the unvoiced sounds are represented by the voiced, though the writing takes no notice of this distinction. Caldwell (3rd ed., p. 138), formulating this state of affairs as the“ Convertibility of Surds and Sonants ”, assumes it to have been characteristic of the primitive Dravidian tongue. In this most people have tended to follow him. More recently, however, contrary opinions have been expressed, notably by M. Jules Bloch.

DANS un long mémoire, qui est sous presse au moment où nous écrivons, le mot manas est défini en ces termes, a propos du Nāsadāsīyasūkta (RV., x, 129):

“Dans la littérature védique et postvédique, les termes specifiques pour designer la connaissance sont dhī, prajñā, jñāna et leurs dérivés,ainsi que plus tard buddhi ; manas est un terme plus large désignant la fonction psychique, qui dans la psychologie de l'epoque n'est pas encore différenciée en facultés particulières, et dont I'aspect prépondérant—ainsi qu'il résulte de l'analyse introspective constamment pratiquée dans les milieux où cette terminologie est progressivement élaborée—est celui du désir, de la tendance, de l'impulsion.

THIS paper deals with two passages in the Chou Li. The first occurs in chapter 66 : [“The Chief Magistrate, ta ssŭ-k'ou] by means of the lucky stone cures tiresome people. When any of the myriad common folk is committing sins and transgressions, but has notactually committed a statutory offence, yet is doing harm to his district, his feet and hands are to be shackled and he is put to sit uponthe lucky stone. [Afterwards ?] he performs forced labour for theMinistry of Works. If the sin is a heavy one, he sits for 13 (? 12) daysand does forced labour for a year. In less flagrant cases he sits fornine days and does forced labour for nine months. Next, seven days’sitting, seven months’ labour ; five days’ sitting, five months’ labour ;three days’ sitting, three months’ labour.

LAMALANGA is situated on the north-west coast of the island called Raga, or Araga (Pentecost Island), in the central New Hebrides, Melanesia.

The head station of the Melanesian Mission on Raga is at Lamalanga which itself is on the coast; but the people who speak the language represented in this grammar live on the hills just above the Mission Station. Dr. R. H. Codrington published a grammar of the language spoken at Vun Marama on the same coast, a few miles north of Lamalanga.

The Melanesian and non-MN languages alike belong to the group known as agglutinating, i.e. they are able to form compound words out of a number of elements, many of which are incapable of independent existence. In this they are not entirely different from the MN languages to the east of them, and yet there is a difference, and that not merely of degree but of kind. Prefixes and suffixes play their parts in these languages, as they do in SEP, but the power of adding indefinitely suffix to suffix is much more limited in insular MN than in SEP. Such a compound word as Suau ‘ita-komakomani-uyo-i-miu, take care of yourselves again, is hardly to be thought of, say, in Mota, Fiji, or Samoa.