On this my first occasion of lecturing to the Society I have a more light-hearted theme to treat than the solemn lecturer on an obscure problem. The emphasis on the first part of Irano-Indian in the title of this brief allocution is for the Iranian tinged with Indian and excluding the Arabian content of Islam. The interaction of these two disciplines, Iranian and Indian, has been constant since the 18th century when the sacred book of the Zoroastrians was revealed to Europe by the voyaging of Anquetil du Perron, who published his famous book The Zend-Avesta in 1771. The abundant Indian documents gave the greater certainty to the understanding of ancient Indian language and literature. The Indian had been further removed to the east; it had lost a considerable part of the older basic vocabulary of the “parent” language (called for want of a good word “Indo-European”), so that words had vanished or survived as isolated evidence for an older stage of the language. In this matter of vocabulary, Iranian was more conservative. The phonetic shape of the language was modified both in the Iranian and the Indian field, but such an Iranian word as myazda- for the “solid offering” is more archaic than the corresponding oldest Indian miyédha-s. To the present day a mountain-dweller in the Pamirs will say nayant “they churn butter“, though the word survived in the oldest Indian 3,000 years ago only in nīta- “churned stuff, butter” and netra- “churning-cord”.

1. A block of stone inscribed with a Greek ( = Gk.) version of the latter part of Aśsoka's Rock Edict ( = RE) XII and the beginning of RE XIII was discovered at Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1963. The text was published in 1964 by D. Schlumbergerand again in the same year by É. Benveniste ( = B.) in Journal Asiatique (=JA). A condensed version of these two articles, in English, was published in Epigraphia Indica (= Ep. Ind.) in 1968.

The theory that Samudra Gupta inherited the kingdom of his maternal grandfather as well as that of his father is unsupported by the lawbooks, for if he were his maternal grandfather's heir he could also inherit his paternal estate only if his father had no other sons, which we know was not the case. Reference to the mother's patrilineage in this and other cases is made (1) to distinguish one's descent from that of half-brothers, (2) because of the political support a mother's family may provide, and (3) to emphasize the special purity or illustriousness of one's descent. The use of metronymics and other practices illustrates a built-in ambiguity in Indo-Aryan kinship: the wife assumes the clan and lineage of her husband upon marriage in theory, but in fact she never fully relinquishes her affiliation to her natal clan and lineage.

In a recent issue of this journal the writer essayed a reading of the fragmentary Parthian ostracon from the 1967 excavations by John Hansman and D. B. Stronach at Shahr-i Qūmis, near Dāmghān, Irān. The tentative reading in line 4 was as follows:

The round brackets at this point indicate the editor's hesitation between similar letter-forms, rather than actual defacement of the lettering. So far as they go, the traces are reasonably clear.

The primary purpose of this article is to present three Lahu texts, each recited by a different ritual specialist during identical rites for the recall of a wandering soul. In order to put these texts in context, I shall give a detailed account of the recall rite. It will be necessary also to explain briefly the Lahu Nyi theory of multiple souls.

The importance of the texts of early Tibetan inscriptions once in the possession of the 18th-century lama, Rig-'dzin Tshe-dbang Nor-bu (RT), has been shown by the recovery from his collection of a lost inscription of Khri Srong-Ide-brtsan (JRAS, 1964) and the substantial restoration, from his material, of that at the tomb of Khri IDe-srong-brtsan (JRAS, 1969). His copy of the rKong-po inscription adds some new matter to the text I have published in JRAS, 1954, and, as it is a valuable social document of the 8th and 9th centuries, there is sufficient reason to attempt a new edition. That leaves for future examination RT's texts of the Lhasa Treaty Inscriptions of 822 and the “sKar-cung” inscription. In the first, his copy gives some help towards establishing a final text; but the inscriptions are long and the necessary critical apparatus is daunting. As for the second, RG has little to add to the text edited by myself in JRASB, 1949, and by Professor Tucci in The tombs of the Tibetan kings, Rome, 1950 (TTK). All that is necessary is to correct a few small errors which crept into the printing, and to comment on a few readings.

It is so long since Indo-Muslim numismatics first attracted scholarly attention and there have been so many devoted labourers in this field that it is gratifying to note a new coinage struck by yet another Indo-Muslim dynasty. To the best of the knowledge of the present writer no coinage of the Samma Jāms of Sind (14th–16th century a.d.) has yet been published. This paper records two varieties of their copper coinage, dating from the latest period of their rule.

Among the pre-Mutiny writings of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817–1898), the Indian Muslim reformer, Āsār al-ṣanādīd, a history and description of Delhi, and its principal buildings and monuments, is a most impressive achievement. From the day of its publication onwards it has repeatedly been acknowledged as an important contribution to our knowledge of the history and archaeology of Delhi. However, on the whole, and in spite of recent re-editions of the work, no due attention has been paid to the fact that as early as 1854, i.e. only seven years after the first edition, Sayyid Aḥmad Khān published a second one remarkably different in form and content. We should like, in what follows, to present some evidence that may help to explain why and how this significantly altered second edition came about. This will also contribute to a better knowledge of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān's early intellectual development.

Isaac Burkill, the scholar whose birth-centenary we are commemorating, has excellently surveyed the history of botanical activities in India. His Chapters on the history of botany in India originally appeared as separate articles in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society from December 1953 onwards. More recently, the Botanical Survey of India responded to a general wish by publishing these articles in book form, revised by Burkill himself, his revision being completed in the 93rd year of his long and fruitful life.