The earliest account of the Śāradā alphabet with which I am acquainted is that contained in Leech's “Grammar of the Cashmeeree Language” in the JASB., vol. xiii, pp. 399 ff., 1844. Leech gives the forms only of the vowels and of the simple consonants, and does not deal with the combinations of consonants with vowels or with conjunct consonants. As the subject is one of some interest, I here give complete tables, showing not only the simple vowels and consonants, but also al; possible combinations of these, as they occur in this alphabet. The characters have all been written for me by my friend Mahāmahōpādhyāya Paṇḍit Mukunda Rāma Śāstrī of Śrīnagar, and may therefore be accepted with the fullest confidence. Two plates illustrating the alphabet were published by Burkhard in his edition of the Kaśmīr Śakuntalā (Vienna, 1884), but I think it will be found that the following tables are much more complete.

While preparing a descriptive register of the manuscript fragments recovered by Sir Aurel Stein from the sand-buried ruins of Khadalik in the course of his second tour of exploration in Eastern Turkestan, I have recently discovered a portion of the Sanskrit version of the Sutta Nipāta. It is contained in fragments of five consecutive folios. According to Fausböll, in the reasoned statement in the Introduction to his Translation of the Sutta Nipāta (in SBE., vol. x), certain portions of that work, including the Aṭṭhavagga, are “very old”, containing as they do “some remnants of Primitive Buddhism” (loc. cit., p. xi). It is just the Aṭṭhavagga which happens to be preserved in the fragments, and it is this fact which imparts a particular interest to the discovery.

The three texts deciphered below appear on a vajra, the property of Mr. G. D. Sofoulis of Shanghai, a photograph of which has been lent to the Egyptian and Oriental Society of Manchester by Mr. F. Evans.

According to the description received the vajra is 37 inches long and from 1¾ to 2 inches wide. It weighs about 5 lb. The blade is made of steel, which is 28½ inches long and is pointed and sharpened on both sides. The inscriptions and the handle are made of pure Chinese or Indian gold and with twenty-four pieces of red and blue stones (corals and others), some of which are lost.

With this Part we attack the series of the Normal Numerals, together with those characters which have been singled out, as homophones of more elaborate structure, to serve as Accountants' or Bankers' alternative forms, less liable to fraudulent alteration.

One of the subjects beloved of Chinese artists is a venerable figure in an attitude of profound reverie shown as part of a wild and romantic scene of forest, crag, and torrent. Sometimes below his rocky hermitage there stretches a plain with far-off shadowy outlines of ordinary mortal habitations, of which the faint remoteness suggests the gulf separating him from mundane cares and vanities. Looking at such a one, instinct tells us that he feels, to use the words of Shelley, “as if his nature were resolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were resolved into his being.” He belongs to a strange race, variously named by Western writers Fairies, Immortals, Genii, Rishi. And here may it be remarked in parenthesis that neither “fairy” nor “immortal” is a term that exactly fits them; nor, indeed, does Arabic jinn or Sanskrit ṛishi. They are a race peculiarly Chinese and apart. Hence it would seem most appropriate to call them by their native name hsien, now commonly written , a pictogram representing perfectly the essence of their cult—the primitive contact of man with Nature typified by the mountains. Hsien, therefore, they will be termed in these pages.

Inscriptional records show that from some time in the ninth or tenth century a.d. the era of b.c. 58, the chief reckoning of Northern India, became known by such names as the time called Vikrama, Vikrama-kāla, i.e. “the time or era of Vikrama,” Vikrama-saṁvat, the years of king Vikrama, the years founded by Vikramā-ditya, the years elapsed since the time of king Vikrama. The same source of information shows that, at a later time, the Śaka era of a.d. 78, which, though it too was of northern origin, became the chief reckoning of Southern India, came to be known by such names as Śālivāhana-Śaka, i.e. “the Śaka or era of Śālivāhana,” the Śaka or era of the glorious and victorious king Śālivāhana, the years of the Śaka or era established by Śālivāhana. And the popular belief, as presented, for instance, in the introductory passages of some of the Pañchāṅgs or Hindū almanacs from which I have given extracts in this Journal, 1911, p. 694, is that the Vikrama era was founded by a king Vikrama reigning in b.c. 58 at Ujjain, in Mālwā, and the Śaka era was founded by a king Śālivāhana reigning in a.d. 78 at Pratishṭhāna, which is the present Paiṭhaṇ, on the Gōdāvarī, in the Nizam's territory.