Free intercourse with Malabar was long denied to the rest of Southern India by the formidable natural obstacle of the Western Ghats with their impenetrable fastnesses and few passes. Owing chiefly to this circumstance that part of the country remained to a great extent isolated and secure from frequent invasions by other southern powers. This isolation, coupled with the conservative nature of the people of this tract, accounts for the preservation intact of several ancient customs of the Indians. Even in later times, whenever there had been any general disaster affecting the whole of the Dekhan, such as an invasion by the Muhammadan kings of the Khilji and Taghlak lines, the west coast afforded a safe asylum to the rest of the south. There is nothing unnatural in the following exclamation of the poet-composer of the Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates of the eleventh century a.d.:—

“Excepting Paramēśvara, who else in this world could contemplate even in mind the humiliation of that country which is protected by the glory of the crest jewel of the Bhrgu race (i.e. Paraśu-Rāma) and the austerities of its chiefs, and which had not been injured by enemies.”

Among the Boghaz Keui tablets is one which, though terribly mutilated, is of considerable interest. It is the story of the war between the gods and the Serpent of Evil told from the Hittite point of view and connected with the institution of the festival of Purulliyas. The original text has been published in the Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi, iii, No. 7.

The allocation of its proper place among Iranian languages to Kurmanji (Kurdish) has been rendered well-nigh impossible up to the present by the lack of material available for examination. The most careful Orientalists tend to consider it a non-Persian language, notably Justi, Darmesteter, and Socin (in the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie). The first emphatically states that it is in no way a degraded New Persian, and that a description of the peculiarities of Iranian speech would not be exhaustive if the phonetics and etymology of Kurdish be disregarded.

The dominating factor in the China trade for over two centuries was the problem of “laying down the dollar”. The dollar was not the currency of China; but during those two centuries—positively to 1834, and practically to 1857— it was the token by which the pound sterling and the woollen cloths of England were converted into the taels of silver and the silks and teas of China; and on the answer to the question whether the dollar delivered to the Company's treasury at Canton had cost to lay down four shillings, or five, or six, might depend the degree of profit on the round voyage.

Our knowledge of ornamental Kufic inscriptions is chiefly based on the materials which have been found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Upper Mesopotamia. Although they are fairly numerous, a comparative study of the origin and general development of the different types of Kufic writing is not yet possible. Such a work would have to include the countries further East, and unfortunately they have not been thoroughly explored hitherto. But the few landmarks we possess show clearly that the outlying Eastern provinces produced a greater variety of decorative inscriptions than the West ever did.