The longest inscription published in Miss Caton Thompson's report on her excavation of the temple of the moon-god at Ḥuraidha l presents some problems which are not unfamiliar in South Arabian inscriptions, but are now set in a fresh light because they are related to the definite archæological results obtained by an exceptionally well-directed, if brief, excavation conducted under difficult conditions.

One of the arduous problems of ancient geography is the location of the furthest points in Atropatene (Azarbayjāan) which were reached by Antonius in 36B.C., by the Byzantine allies of Khusrau II in A.D.591 and by the Emperor Heraclius in A.D. 624–7.

In Iranian Studies [I], BSOS vi (1933), 945 ff., I commented briefly`upon a text of the Bahman Yašt (Vahman yašt or yasn), in which certain ethnical names occurred. It was desired then chiefly to point out the name of the Karmīr xyōn “Red Chionitae” beside the Spēt xyōn “White Chionitae”, and the forms of the name of Sogdiana. I did not, however, succeed in interpreting the whole passage satisfactorily, and after ten years I venture once more to call attention to it. To the bibliography given in BSOS vi 9451 should add here the edition of the Bahman Yašt by Anklesaria, The Zand-î Vohûman Yasn 1919 (which came into my hands after I had written the'paper); B. N. Dhabhar, The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framarz, 1932, which contains on p. 465 a translation of the Parsi-Persian text to be found in M. R. Unvala's. Dârâb Hormazyâr's Rivâyat ii 91 (1932); Markwart, Provincial Cities of Eranshahr, p. 69.

The original of the MS. here reproduced was recently presented to the A Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies by Professor Arberry, with the suggestion that the handwriting might be found to be that of Sir W. Jones. This conjecture, as will be shown below, has proved to be correct.

The röle which the Manichæans played in the migration of tales and fables from East to West and West to East has received much attention in recent years, but next to nothing has been published of the abundant Iranian material which was found in Chinese Turkestan. The present collection of Sogdian stories, taken (with the possible exception of text J) from Manichæan manuscripts, is meant to close this gap. These stories are also of some interest from the linguist's point of view. For while the Christian and Buddhist Sogdian texts are valuable merely as repositories of vocables, the Manichæan texts alone (apart from the few available Sogdian documents and letters) give us a clear idea of the true structure and syntax of the Sogdian language, and this quality is nowhere better apparent than in these stories, which are sometimes pleasingly vivid. Even the translated texts are written in good Sogdian, partly because the Manichæans were better translators than their Christian and Buddhist compatriots, partly because it was easier to translate from Middle Persian or Parthian, languages closely related to Sogdian, than from Syriac or Chinese. How different real Sogdian was from the miserable stammer of the Christian and Buddhist translators is shown at a glance by the Sogdian Tale of Rustam, of which we have a larger fragment now, thanks to the publication of the Codices Sogdiani, Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Mission Pelliot).

In the following pages an attempt will be made to resolve certain obscurities in the references made by Byzantine writers to the Turki nations of Central and Western Asia in that period—the sixth century—when the two civilizations first came into contact. It is hoped thereby to throw additional light on the situation of the various Turki tribes at that date.

In a footnote to page 1083 of K. C. Balderston's Thraliana (Oxford, 1942) we read Mrs. Thrale's opinion of our only full-length biography of Sir William Jones (1746–1794), that written by his friend Sir John Shore (later Lord Teign-mouth) and prefixed to the definitive edition of the great scholar's published works: “This Fashion of publishing Lives & Remains is a very amusing Fashion—& Sir William JOne's is the least entertaining among them all.” This judgement on Teignmouth's Memoirs is 'pretty generally shared by all who have read them with an eye to truth and proportion; the book is marred by the author's too patent anxiety to make of his hero a prophet of Clapham evangelicalism, and to mitigate the harshness of his uncompromising politics. For the bare facts of Jone's life and career Teignmouth may, nevertheless, be consulted with due caution: the purpose of this paper is to attempt to put into a proper perspective certain aspects of Jones's activities and character which have not been hitherto sufficiently delineated. Almost all the material used in this essay consists of unpublished letters from Jones to his one-time pupil and life-long friend; Lord Althorp, the 2nd Earl Spencer: I here record my gratitude to the present Earl Spencer, who most kindly lent me copies of a considerable range of this interesting correspondence.

[Following the study I made on some points connected with chronological matters relating to the Sasanian period, I published some short articles dealing with these points in BSOS., ix, pp. 125–139, and ZMDG., vol. 91, part 3, pp. 675–7. In 1938 and 1939 I concluded these studies with an article on the chronology of the early Sasanian rulers for publication in BSOS.in 1939. The Bulletin being already completed for Press, the publication of my article was not found possible, and therefore Professor Sten Konow, of Oslo, on the suggestion of my old friend Professor Arthur Christensen, of Copenhagen, who is himself one of the best living authorities on the history of the Sasanian period of Iran, offered to publish the article in Acta Orientalia. Accordingly I sent the copy of the article to Oslo in the closing weeks of 1939. Professor Konow, in a letter which reached me in March, 1940, asked me if, owing to some difficulty in sending and getting back printed matter by ordinary post at that time, he could read the proof of the article himself and proceed to publish it. I agreed, but my reply to this effect, though sent immediately, did not reach him owing to the cessation of postal communication between England and Norway. I have never since been able to ascertain if the article was or was not published in the Acta.

In the meantime I have been pursuing my study of this subject, and new points occurring to me from time to time, I decided some time later to revise the whole article, and the following pages are the result, which may be considered as a fully revised form of the article which was to be published in the acta.]

Among the peoples of Mongolia at the advent of Chingiz Khān the Karaits () stand out for several reasons. First, We can trace them for more than three centuries, roughly A.D. 1000 to 1300. Second, in them we have the unusual phenomenon of a Far Eastern nation professing Christianity. Third, they have the interest of being connected with the story of Prester John, of Which the attraction has not altogether vanished. In what follows the attempt is made to give a connected account of these Karaits. From the nature of the sources it will be confined largely to the history of their ruling house.

The Cambridge History of English Literature dismisses Sir William Jones in one short paragraph at the end of the chapter by the late Professor Saintsbury on “The Lesser Poets of the Eighteenth Century”. Here he is described as “more of an orientalist and a jurist than a poet”, and brief commendation is given to his Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus and his Epigram from the Persian. There is no mention either of his other English works or his influence on English poetry. None of the shorter histories of English literature, as far as I know, alludes to him at all, although they all devote a good deal of space to the so-called “Precursors of Romanticism” in the eighteenth century. Professor R. M. Hewitt in his valuable essay, Harmonious Jones, the best appreciation of Sir William Jones as an English writer which has hitherto appeared, has pointed out that “recent histories of literature, though they still find room for James Macpherson, omit even the name of Sir William Jones, whose influence on poetry and on public opinion and general culture has been both more extensive and more permanent”.

The famous manuscript in Kharoṣṭhī script which contains an anthology of Buddhist verses similar to the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Pali Dhammapada became known first in 1892, when portions came into the hands of MM. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan. They were told that the MS. had been found in the ruins of the Vihāra at the Gośṛnga hill (on this site see M. A. Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp. 185 ff.). Other portions were acquired by the Russian Consul-General in Kashghar, M. N. Th. Petrovskii, and were sent by him to M. S. F. Oldenburg in St. Petersburg in February, 1897. In the same year, 1897, M. Oldenburg prepared a photograph and transcription of one folio of the St. Petersburg collection, which was published and presented by the Oriental Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg to the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held in Paris in 1897 (Predvaritel'naja zametka o buddijskoj rukopisi, napisannoj pismenami Kharoṣṭhī, St. Petersburg). Meantime, also in 1897, the portions of the MS. which had been brought to Paris were placed in the hands of M. Émile Senart, who published his reading and interpretation of the MS., with five facsimiles, in the Journal Asiatique (1898, ii, pp. 193–308). He used in addition to the text published in facsimile a large number of small fragments, and was also able to add the readings of that part of the St. Petersburg manuscript which contained half-lines fitting into his fragment B. M. Senart remarked that the portion of the MS. in St. Petersburg was more extensive and better preserved than the portion in Paris.

Isaac De Beausobre, the Huguenot author of one of the best books ever written on Manichæism (Histoire critique de Manichée et du Mani cheïsme, Amsterdam, 1734, 1739), was the one to make the only sound suggestions on the sources used by Mani for the compilation of his Book of the Giants: the Book of Enoch, and the which Kenan, a great-grandson of Noah, discovered lying in a field (vol. i, 429, n. 6). The latter work has been indentified by Alfaric (Lex Écritures Manichéennes, ii, 32) with a book whose contents are briefly indicated in the Decretum Gelasianum, p. 54, II. 298–9 (ed. Dobschütz): Liber de Ogia nomine gigante qui post diluvium cum dracone ab hereticis pugnasse perhibetur apocryphys. Of the Book of Enoch, which was composed in the Hebrew language in the second century B.C., only an Ethiopic version, a few Greek fragments, and some excerpts made by the Byzantine chronographer Georgius Syncellus survive. Mani, who could hardly read the Hebrew, must have used an Aramaic edition based directly on the Hebrew text (see below, Šhmyz'd). He quotes mainly from the first part, which Georgius S. (p. 45, EI.-R.) called “the first book of Enoch on the Egrēgoroi”, but shows himself acquainted also with the subsequent chapters.

The vague and indiscriminate use of the term Kurd goes back to early times. According to Ḥamza Iṣfahānī (circa 350/961), ed. Berlin, 151, “The Persians used to call Daylamites ‘the Kurds of Ṭabaristān’, as they used to call Arabs ‘the Kurds of Sūristān’, i.e. of 'Irāq”. Other Arab and Persian authors of the tenth century A.D. mean by Kurds any Iranian nomads of Western Persia, suth as the tent-dwellers of Fārs.

Among the unexpected discoveries from the treasure of Central Asian manusćripts found in Tun-huang is a manuscript now belonging to the Fonds Pelliot in the Bibliothèque Nationale, numbered P 2892. This manuscript contains 184 lines of text in the cursive Brahmi script usual in Khotanese manuscripts. In lines 1–165 (mid-line) is written an excerpt in Khotanese from the medical text Siddhasāra corresponding to 5 v 4—14 v 4 of the Siddhāsara published in facsimile in Codices Khotanenses (1938), of which a transliterated text has been in print since December, 1941, in Khotanese Texts I. From the middle of line 165, after an elaborate mark of punctuation, there follow 19 lines of text in a Turkish dialect. It contains a vocabulary of ninety-seven Turkish words concerned with archery and parts of the body. Some of the words are glossed in Khotanese, and for some of these words the Turkish supplies the meaning. The date of the vocabulary may be the ninth or tenth century A.D. It would appear to be written down by a Khotanese scribe who wanted to learn Turkish.

“He intends going to India as a merchant but, previous to his embarkation, wishes to give some time to the study of foreign languages, European and Asiatic, and particularly the Persian.” These words are taken from a letter of introduction which Jones wrote to be presented to Schultens; even a professor must regard a language as something to be used, not merely an object of study. Jones had begun to learn Arabic at Harrow, and at Oxford a friend encouraged him to continue this study. He met in London a native of Aleppo and persuaded him to go to Oxford, hoping that other Oxford men would be glad to make use of his services and help to pay his salary, but in this he was disappointed. The Syrian was no scholar, so Jones made him translate Galland's version of the Arabian Nights into the vernacular, and then he turned this version into literary Arabic with the help of the grammars of Erpenius and Golius. What Jones accomplished in Arabic would have been a respectable performance for any ordinary man; when added to what he did in other languages it is marvellous. He worked under difficulties; he had his living to earn, the amount of Arabic literature in print was small—a poet might be represented by one poem only—some manuscripts were badly written, if we may judge from the facsimile of the Bughyat, yet on this narrow base he raised the edifice of a sound knowledge of the language and an appreciation of its qualities. As the later historians, Bar Hebræus and El-Makīn, were the first to be known in Europe, so a late work on literature, the Shekerdan (Sukkardān al-sulṭān al-malik al-Nāṣir by Shihāb al-Dīn ibn Abī Ḥajala, written in 1356) is prominent in his pages.

This document (No. 661 in Kharosṣṭhī inscriptions transcribed and edited by A. M. Boyer, E. J. Rapson, and É. Senart [and P. S. Noble]) has been the subject of special study by Professor Konow (Acta Orientalia, ii, pp. 124–7; x, pp. 77–80; xiv, pp. 233–240), and by Professor Noble (Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, VI, pp. 445–455), not to mention the subsequent discussion by Dr. Burrow of the word hinajha and his translation. The historical and linguistic importance which has been given to the document may excuse a further study of its problems. In order to make an auspicious commencement of these notes we may welcome the opportunity of acknowledging the advance made in the interpretation by Professor Konow's latest discussion, in Acta Orientalia, xiv, pp. 231 sqq. He shows that on the basis of the Saka-Khotanī forms the prima facie surprising royal name Vijita-Siṃha may be interpreted as practically equivalent to the Vijaya-Siṃha of the Khotan Chronicle. In Sanskrit-Prākrit also vijita could in certain circumstances have the same meaning as vijaya “victory” (as well as also that of “dominions”), so that a hearer or reader need not have been misled into understanding “Vanquished Lion”. We may accordingly forgo the reading Avijita-Siṃha or the idea of a guasi-approbrious name on the lines of Raṇa-bhīta, etc.: to understand the name as a bahu-vrīhi “one who has vanquished (s.c. surpasses) the lion” would be inappropriate, since the Vijaya/Vijita is a recurrent, dynastic, element in the names. Possibly, however, we may not even yet have completely solved the problem the (elsewhere also instanced) form Vijita, to which we may recur infra.

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that of the various important contributions made by Sir William Jones to the initiation and development of Persian studies in Europe, none was more felicitous, or more far-reaching in its consequences, than his early labours with the lyrics of Ḥāfiẓ; and of these labours, none bore sweeter fruit than his making of the immortal “Shīrāzī Turk” into A Persian Song.

A. A. Macdonell in his commentary on RV. IV. 50.5 (Vedic Reader for Students) remarks: “The exact meaning … does not clearly appear from its four occurrences; but it must have a sense closely allied to receptacle—in three passages it is spoken of as being rent or pierced, and twice is associated with Valá; and in the Naighaṇṭuka it is given as a synonym of megha cloud.” Grassmann (Wörterbuch) similarly translates as Behälter, Wolke. The four passages in which it occurs are I. 62.4, phaligam, Indra śakra, valaṃ raveṇa darayo, “Rend, O mighty Indra, the ph. cage with a crash”; I. 121.10, tam, adrivaḥ, phaligaṃ hetim asya, “At that ph., O thou of the thunderbolt, hurl thy missile”; IV. 50.5, sa … valaṃ ruroja phaligaṃ raveṇa, “He hath burst with a crash the ph. cage”; VIII. 32.35, ya udnaḥ phaligaṃ bhinan nyak sindhūṃr avāsṛjat, “Who split the ph. of the water and let the streams rush down.” Phaligam is here a valam, cave, prison or cage, but is not always used as such, otherwise there would be no need to complete its meaning by valam. It shares with the rock and the cloud the function of imprisoning the waters, but, unlike the twin aśman (cloud above and rock below), is not mentioned as a producer of fire. The cloud, like the rock, must be hard, so that the clash of the upper with the nether aśman may yield fire, and phaligam is probably hard also. It may be white, like the bright cloud or the snow-capped mountain, grey or even black, like the rain-charged cloud or the stark rock.

One of the greatest Persian poets, Afḍal al-Dīn Ibrāhīm Khāqānī, is still insufficiently known to the public. Only in 1937 was his Dīvān printed in Tehran, and before that date the readers had to content themselves with an inconvenient Indian lithograph published some seventy years ago. The long Mathnavī (Tuḥfat al 'Irāqayn) in which the poet describes his pilgrimage accomplished in 551–2/1156–7 is available only in Indian lithographs.

Since 1880 more than forty publications have been registered in Madras as “Saurāshtranā, the language noticed but not described under the name Paṭṇūlī in the Linguistic Survey of India, vol. vs., 2, pp. 447–8. It is spoken by more than a hundred thousand persons who play an important part in the textile industry of Madras and form a considerable element in the population of Madura and of other towns and localities in the Tamil districts. The great majority of them (89,000 out of 104,000) speak Tamil as a second language. Thurston's Castes and Tribes of South India, vol. vi (1909), gives an account of them in the article “Patnūlkārans”, and for the present purpose it is only necessary to say that according to their own tradition their original home was Surāṣṭra. In A.D. 437–8, as is recorded by a Mandasor inscription, the guild of silk-weavers who had migrated to Mandasor from Lāṭa-viṣaya erected a temple to the Sun (paṭṭavāyir udāraṃ ṥreēṇībhītair bhavanam atulaṃ kāritam), which they repaired in A.D. 473–4, the date of the inscription. It is a reasonable conjecture that they were ancestors of the present Saurāshtrans of South India. The inscription presents them as a self-contained community, in which learning and the martial arts as well as industrial skill were represented, and it may well be that Vatsabhaṭṭi, who composed the epigraphic poem, was himself a member of the ṥrēṇi. They may be supposed to have resided in Mandasor for a time. But long before the place was captured by the Muhammadans in the early fourteenth century the modern Saurāshtrans according to the tradition migrated to the Yādava capital Dēvagiri (Daulatābād). Subsequent migrations led them first to Vijayanagar, and finally into the Tamil country which is now their home. This account of their migrations is said to be preserved in a set form of words used in their marriage ceremonies. That they must have come under Telugu influence is plain from the considerable Telugu element in certain publications. The language which they brought from Lāṭa or Surāṣṭra may therefore have come successively under the influence, first and for a very long time, of Rājasthān forms of speech, and then of Marathi, Telugu and Tamil.