The gilšu is found in both sexes and on both sides of the body. It is followed in the text series by qinnātu (GU.DU.MEŠ) “the buttocks”. This specific anatomical term appears to refer quite clearly to the upper part of the lower limb. Further evidence may be provided by the description of carrying children straddling the hip region, a form of transporting infants which is still widely practised among the more primitive peoples of Africa and Asia at the present time. As it is an obvious landmark, easily recognizable on the surface of the body; it may perhaps be the palpable mass formed by the protrusion of the greater trochanter of the femur. However, this is still open to question.

Among the examples of sgraffiato pottery from the excavations at Takht-i Sulaymān in Iran shown by Dr. Rudolf Schnyder during the oral presentation of his paper “Medieval incised and carved wares from North West Iran”—read to the Percival David Foundation's Fourth Colloquy on Art and Archaeology in Asia, but not included amongst the published illustrations—was a specimen bearing a short Arabic inscription. I am grateful to Dr. Schnyder for allowing me to publish here, in developed form, my contribution to the subsequent discussion, and to him and the Musée National Suisse for providing the photograph reproduced in Plate I.

In his Gurū Nānak and the Sikh religion (Oxford, 1968), Dr. W. H. McLeod quoted verbatim (pp. 131–2) a note which, at his invitation, I had sent to him regarding an inscription at Baghdad. This inscription, discovered by some Sikh soldiers after the entry of British and Indian troops into the city in March 1917, is now set in the wall inside the reputed (and much restored) tomb of Buhlūl, itself adjacent to the tombs of Sitt Zubayda (the wife of Hārūn al-Rashīd) and of “Yūsha' Nabī”, between the modern airport and the railway station Baghdad West. Ever since its discovery, Sikh scholars have regarded it as recording a visit to Baghdad by Gurū Nānak (1469–1539) in 927 A.H. (= A.D. 1520–1), as the figures beneath the text were first read, or in 917/1511–12.

In this paper it is proposed to evaluate the Indian literary data up to the early centuries A.D. as a source for a history of iron in India. The issues to be considered are: the beginning of the use of iron in agriculture, the terms used to denote iron, and the metallurgical details, if any.

Controversy continues over the position of the paribhāṣās in the textual order of the Āpastamba Śrautasūtra. The paribhāṣās occupy the first four kaṇḍikās of the 24th Praśna in the printed text edited by R. Garbe. They are regarded by Garbe as a later addition and by Narasimhachar as the initial portion of the Śrautasūtra. This paper examines the validity of their views. From a reassessment of their data combined with further grounds the present author concludes that the position in which the paribhāṣās now appear in the printed text is the original one.

Of the ten incarnations of Viṣṇu which he is believed in classical Hinduism to have undergone for the welfare of the human beings on earth, the sixth is that of Paraśurāma, a Brahmanic hero whose characteristic feature was the axe (paraśu) with which he is reported to have slain innumerable Kṣatriya warriors in 21 combats. We may perhaps recall here the most important events of the legend as it occurs in the Mahābhārata (III.116, XII.49.27–60, cf. also XIII.153) and in the Purāṇas: Harivaṃśa (I.33), Vāyu (Adhy.94), Matsya (Adhy.43), Viṣṇu (IV.11.9–20), Bhāgavata (IX.15, 16), Mārkaṇḍeya (Adhy.17), Brahmāḍḍa (III.26–47, very extensive!), and Viṣṇudharmottara (I.Adhy.25–7 ff.):