The great merit of the laborious publication of the Bower Manuscript by Dr. Hoernle need not here be repeated. Since I met this excellent scholar some years ago, I have carefully examined the whole Chinese Tripiṭaka to identify the manuscript, but I have only been able to find one of the various texts of which it is composed. This is, however, one of the most important Sūtras of Buddhist mysticism; and its curious relation with the Pāli scriptures in many places throws some light upon the dark question of the history of Buddhist literature.

To the life and doctrines of the famous founder of the Ḳādirī Order a certain amount of attention has already been devoted in Europe, yet scarcely sufficient to render further investigation of the subject unnecessary.

Much of what I shall say here has appeared before in scattered essays which are not likely to have been seen by many members of the Royal Asiatic Society, and I am grateful for the opportunity now given for considering the question as a whole, and for hearing in the discussion which will, I hope, follow, any arguments that may have escaped my notice for and against the theories advanced. The object of the present paper is to show how the beliefs of the early Nestorian Christians have been absorbed by Hinduism, and how they have profoundly affected the religious system current over a large portion of India.

For want of a critical edition of the Mahābhārata, such an eminent scholar as Professor Rhys Davids has been led to think that, though there is no mention of the worship of Śiva under the form of the Linga in the old Buddhistic records, “Phallus-worship is often mentioned, quite as a matter of course, in the Mahābhārata” (“Budhistic India,” p. 165). Whatever may be the date of the Mahābhārata Saṁhitā, it may be successfully shown that the Linga, as a form of Śiva, is not recognised in that great epic.

In continuing the inquiry into the tradition about the subsequent fate of the eight original deposits of the corporeal relics of Buddha, we take next the second Ceylonese chronicle, the Mahāvaṁsa; or, more precisely, the earlier part of that work, which was composed, by way of being a commentary on the Dīpavaṁsa, by the Thēra Mahānāma, in or about the period A.D. 520 to 540.

Like the Dīpavaṁsa, the Mahāvaṁsa does not present any narrative such as that found in the Divyāvadāna. But, as we shall see, it gives a story about the relics at Rāmagrāma which is not found in either of those works.

In his report on the Buddhist remains near Kasia (Allahabad, 1896) Mr. V. A. Smith adduced various arguments to disprove Cunningham's identification of Kasia with Ksinārā, and in a paper subsequently contributed to this Journal (1902, p. 139) the same author came to the conclusion that the scene of Buddha's death is to be sought in Nepāl territory. The finds of last year's excavations at Kasia—a full account of which will be published in the Annual of the Archæological Survey—include documents directly bearing on this question.

The text of which the title is given below has recently been published as part 3 of vol. cli of the “Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse,” and as it is the first work in the Mon language that has ever been edited and printed in Europe, probably the readers of this Journal will be interested to have some information about it.

On trouvera dans le Journal, 1900, p. 345, une description sommaire de la petite collection de MSS. que C. Bendall avait empruntés à la Bibliothèque de Kaṭhmaṇḍu et dont il m'a laissé de bonnes photographies. La maladio, hélas! ne lui a pas permis de la publier dans son ensemble: il n'en a fait paraître que deux pièces, d'ailleurs infiniment curieuses, un fragment du Cullavagga et une page du Bhikṣuṇīprātimokṣa de l'Eglise du Mahāyāna. Mais de nombreuses notes manuscrites faciliteront ma tâche d'éditeur, et continueront pour moi le charme mélancolique d'une collaboration qui fut naguères la meilleure joie de mes études.

The tribes of Upper Burma and Eastern Assam known as Kachins have, both before and after the annexation of Northern Burma, attracted a great deal of attention from ethnologists and philologists. A considerable literature has accumulated on the subject since the time Colonel Hannay, in 1846, and Dr. Anderson, in 1868, gave us the first reliable information regarding these savage and warlike hill tribes. At present they occupy a large and fertile territory extending almost from 29° North latitude to 20° 30′. They number probably about half a million, of which one hundred thousand occupy independent territory, the larger part being under British or Chinese rule.

The late Professor S. Arthur Strong, at the time of his lamented death, was engaged upon an edition (to be published in the Monograph Series) of the work of the celebrated historian Abu-l-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn 'Arabshāh entitled At-ta'lif aṭ-ṭāhir fī shityam al-Malik aḍh-ḍhāhir al-Qā'im bi-nuṣrat al-Ḥaqq Abī Sa'īd Jaqmaq, of which a unique MS. exists in the Library of the British Museum (Or. 3026). This treatise, a panegyric upon the Mamlūk Sulṭān of Egypt and Syria, al-Malik aḍh-Ḍhāhir Saif ad-dīn Jaqmaq (842–857 H.), was composed by the author in the year 843, when Jaqmaq had been less than two years on the throne, as an antidote (he says) to his previous work, the biography of that scourge of humanity, the great devastator Tlmūr the Lame, in order that, having set forth the career of a ruthless destroyer of mankind, he might draw also the picture of a just and righteous monarch, the father of his people and the terror only of the enemies of Islam.