Ethnologists divide the Indian Āryas into two groups, the Indo-Aryan and the Aryo-Dravidian. The Indo-Aryans occupy the Indus basin, that is to say the greater part of the Panjab; and they have colonized a considerable part of Northern and Central Rajputana. They are homogeneous, more homogeneous than the English, who are the most homogeneous people in Europe; and that, despite various foreign invaders, who have settled among them within historic times, and whom they have assimilated. Prince and peasant differ little in their physical build.

The Armenian cemetery at Iṣfahān is an arid and waterless tract of desert land lying to the south of the city, between the Armenian suburb of New Julfa and the high hill known as the Kūh-i-Ṣuffah, and was granted to the community by Shāh 'Abbās the Great (1587–1629), who gransported the colony of Armenians from Julfa on the Araxes to his capital and granted to them the tract of land on the southern bank of the Zāyandah Rūd, opposite to the city, where the suburb which they named after their old home in Armenia now stands. Here they have enjoyed, from the time of āh 'Abbās, various privileges, not uninterrupted by periods of oppression and persecution. They have been allowed to build churches, of which the suburb now contains twelve, including All Saints', the Cathedral Church of the extensive Armenian diocese of Persia and India, to practise their religion freely, and even to offend the ears of pious Muslims with the sound of church bells.

Among the most important results of philological research in recent years is the decipherment of the Hittite language by Dr. Friedrich Hrozný, Professor of Semitic Languages in the University of Vienna. Hrozný's account of his work is contained in the Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (No. 15), and at the suggestion of my friend—now, alas, the late—Professor James Hope Moulton, I have summarized Hrozný's interim report for English readers.

In the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1915, p. 22, Mr. Minns published two Greek documents of the Parthian period acquired by Dr. Sa'id Khan from Avroman in Kurdistan, together with the facsimile of a third, not in Greek, which was found at the same place. As the writing of this third document (on parchment) seemed to be Aramaic in character, he very kindly sent me a photograph of it at the time, and has since given me additional information. The following note represents mainly what I then made out of the text, but it has lain in a drawer ever since because the results seemed hardly worth publishing.

Religious worship is abundantly illustrated in many of its most important aspects by scenes engraved on Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian seal cylinders. Chronologically the seals of this region illustrate nearly every period of the long history of these peoples and the changing rituals and beliefs of their religion. A very large proportion of the seals represent the owner of the seal approaching a deity in the attitude of prayer. This is especially true of the glyptique of Sumer and Akkad, where the proportion of this type of seal to all others is much greater than in Assyria. In the northern empire the Assyrians are not so much attached to the scenes of worship, but even here this motif is well represented. The engravers of cylinders in all periods probably kept in stock seals engraved with the scene of the private prayer as the custom imposed in their periods. The human who is figured standing before a god, or in Assyria more frequently before a divine symbol, is not a portrait of the owner of the seal. The owner regards himself rather as represented and symbolized by the conventional figure. In those cases in which the engraver produced a seal cylinder at the command of a Sumerian or Babylonian, perhaps, we may regard the praying figure as an approximate portrait.

In two papers published in this Journal I dealt with the stories about the first Vasiṣṭha, who is famous in historical tradition. He flourished during the reigns of three kings of Ayodhyā, Trayyāruṇa, Satyavrata Triśaṇku and Hariścandra, and his personal name was Devarāj. This paper deals with the next great Vasiṣṭha, who lived in the reign of a later king, Sagara. Those papers brought the Ayodhyā genealogy down to Hariscandra and his son Rohita. The next portion of the genealogy is given thus by five Puranas, which agree generally, and the collated text runs thus, immaterial variations being omitted:—

Harito Rohitasyâtha Cañcur Hārita ucyate

Vijayaś ca Sudevaś ca Cañcu-putrau babhūvatuḥ

jetā kṣatrasya sarvasya Vijayas tena sa smṛtaḥ

Rurukas tanayas tasya rājā dharmârtha-kovidaḥ

Rurukasya Vṛkaḥ putras tasmād Bāhus tu jajñivān.

The vicissitudes of a Jewish secretary, whom his master, an Emir in Damascus, compelled to adopt Islām and to accompany him on his pilgrimage to Medinah and Mekkah, are described in a number of skilfully wrought Hebrew poems printed here for the first time. They are extant in two manuscripts, Oxford MS. Heb. f. 3 and 4 (see Neubauer-Cowley's Catalogue of Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian, vol. ii, Nos. 27262–4 and 2766). They are designated as Ḳaraite hymns (so on the backs of the binding), but have really no connexion whatever with this sect. The handwriting seems to be of the fourteenth century, but furnishes no conclusive evidence.

Ahura is besought to send Success and Immortality, to the Representative Saint among His People, through His Holy Spirit and Its practical Influence.

1. Śvāntena, kila puṇyena, manyuna, vasiṣṭhena ca manasā,

(b) sacā ṛtāt(-te) cyautnenaca vacasā ca (-ā-)

(c) asmai dhuḥ(-r) (dāt) sarvatātī(-y-)-amṛtatve

(d) sumedhāḥ kṣatreṇa-(-ā-)-aramatī(-y) asuraḥ.

Ahura is besought to work out this Blest Result by Means of Personal Propagation and the Gāthic Hymns sung widely, and through the Organized Devoted Labour of Aramaiti—He is thus the Father of His Saint (inspired by Asha Archangel of the Law).

A bad plan, they say, is better than no plan at all, and I think it must be so. Perhaps, too, a less morbid attraction to perplexing problems might have avoided, or more Pelmanistic concentration reduced, the unanticipated disproportion of treatment in the present instalment of these Papers.

In the March issue of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1911, I published a paper entitled “Enlil and Ninlil, the Older Bel and Beltis”, one of a series of papers dealing with the gods of Babylonia from unnoticed or unusual points of view. In this contribution to the subject of Babylonian mythology appears, among other things, a transcription and translation of a British Museum tablet dealing with these deities as the “youthful hero and handmaid” of the Babylonian city of Niffur (Niffer, also, it is said, pronounced Noufar), identified by the Hebrews of Rabbinical times with the Calneh of the 10th chapter of Genesis.

There is frequently to be seen in cemeteries and monastery grounds in Japan a stone figure known as the Sotoba. The word is the Japanese pronunciation of the Sanscrit Stūpa, and the parts of the figure represent the Five Elements conceived as composing the Universe, namely: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space. An illustration of it is given in Fig. 1, taken from a Japanese Buddhist picture, in my possession, of the Sumisen, Mount Sumēru, the World Mountain. It may be convenient if the term Elemental Stūpa is used in this paper to designate this figure, so that it may be distinguished from what is usually implied by the word Stūpa in India. The term Sotoba will be used only when reference is made to the Elemental Stūpa in Japan.

The Society of Biblical Archæology was born at a meeting held on November 18, 1870, at the rooms of Mr. Joseph Bonomi, Curator of the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Its ruling spirit was from the first Dr. Samuel Birch, the then Keeper of the Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, at whose instance the meeting was convened. It was attended by some eighteen gentlemen, of whom Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Mr. J. W. Bosanquet, and Canon Cook were perhaps those best known to fame, and in the result decided to form itself into a Society “for the investigation of the Archæology, Chronology, Geography, and History of Ancient and Modern Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, and other Biblical Lands, the promotion of the study of the Antiquities of those countries, and the preservation of a continuous record of discoveries now or hereafter to be in progress”. With this view an association with Mr. William Cooper as Secretary was instituted, which by March 21 in the following year had received a sufficient number of adherents to hold monthly meetings, at which papers were read, to be afterwards printed and circulated either at the author's expense or at that of one or two of the richer members. In his Inaugural Address to the first of these gatherings, Dr. Birch, who had been unanimously elected President, gave a summary, still well worth reading, on the then state of Oriental Archæology and the discovery of its principal monuments, and struck the note which has been sustained throughout the Society's history by the announcement that “Archæology and not Theology” was its aim, and that “it must be attractive to all who are interested in the primitive and early history of mankind”. Early in 1872 it had progressed sufficiently to take rooms at 9 Conduit Street, Regent Street, to formulate a set of Rules, afterwards embodied in the Memorandum and Articles of Association, and to publish the first volume of Transactions, together with a list of 166 members, which included Mr. Tyssen Amherst (afterwards Lord Amherst of Hackney), Mr. Arthur Cates (of H.M. Office of Works), Canon T. K. Cheyne, Dr. Currey (Master of the Charterhouse), Mr. Gladstone, Count Gleichen, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Howorth, Canon Lightfoot, Professor Mahaffy, Mr. Walter Morrison, Canon George Rawlinson, Professor Sayce, and Captain (afterwards Sir Charles) Wilson, R.E.—names which show how widely the net had been thrown. Of the papers published, many were of high merit, and included a study of the Early History of Babylonia by the late George Smith, another on the Origin of Semitic Civilization by Professor Sayce, and several on the then newly-found Cypriote Inscriptions, by their discoverer, Mr. R. Hamilton Lang (H.M. Consul at Cyprus), George Smith, and Dr. Birch.

1. The Identification of the Name D-Tagtug Sumero-Babylonian myths and legends were rich in tales of prehistoric rulers, heroes who became the subjects of epics, poems, and cults. Consecutive and intensive study of Cuneiform inscriptions has revealed a vast structure of ancient Sumerian hero-worship upon which was erected their extensive theological and ethical literature. Of the kings of the first legendary dynasty at Kish; Etana, a one-time shepherd, became the hero of a fine poem, preserved only in Semitic, known as The Legend of Etana, him who essayed to mount to heaven on the wings of an eagle in quest of the “plant of child- bearing”. Dumuzi, the hunter, king in a legendary dynasty of Erech, was deified and became the dying god of Sumerian religion. Gilgamish, a king of the same dynasty, became the national hero of Sumer and Akkad, about whom arose endless stories of the chase and the epic of “He that hath seen all things”, or the so-called Epic of Gilgamish. Ziudsuddu, last of the ten legendary kings before the flood, became the famous survivor of the Flood in both Sumerian and Accadian poems of the Deluge. About Adapa, a seafaring sage of Eridu, was told one of the versions of the fall of man.

The following is a transcription and translation of the reverse of the British Museum Tablet the text of which is given on p. 191. The whole legend, as far as known, is printed on pp. 185–205 from Professor Stephen Langdon's rendering.

The accompanying reproduction of a picture of a seated Yogī was shown to me by the owner, a resident of Ajmere, but of whose name, unfortunately, I made no note, at Allahabad in 1911. It is of considerable interest, not only as a Mughal portrait of the very finest quality, but as an evidently authentic likeness of a famous Sādhu— the Gosāīṅ Jadrūp—referred to at some length in the Memoirs of Jahāngīr and elsewhere.

The parchment fragment reproduced on Plate I was acquired some twenty years since by the British Museum, where it is numbered Or. 6201 C (1). It lay among a large quantity of Coptic papyrus and parchment MSS., the dialect, scripts, and incidental names of which confirm the seller's statement that all were bought together at Ashmunain. The ages of these manuscripts vary greatly; some of the parchment uncials should belong to the 5th or 6th century, others and some of the papyri to the 9th or 10th. The large majority of the latter are, however, of the 7th or 8th century. Obviously, from such facts none but the vaguest conclusions can be drawn.

Among the MSS. which came into the possession of the library of Jews' College from the collection of the late Rev. Dr. A. Löwy there is one bearing the superscription “Geez and Falasha MS. brought [and] presented to A. L¨wy from Dr. Athé, traveller in Abyssinia”. To judge from the paper the MS. is of comparatively recent date, probably late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. It consists of thirty leaves, 6½ by 4½ inches, with between 22 and 32 lines on each page. On the first two pages is to be found a number of pencil notes in German, probably by either of the late owners.

A Late issue of the Times contained an article on Labour action songs, giving illustrations. I give below two of the chants which are, or used to be, droned out by the palki-bearers on the Simla—Bilaspur and the Dalhousie-Pathānkot road The railway and Tonga have now nearly made them a thing of the past. The palki or palanquin is carried by four bearers who shoulder the pole running through the vehicle, two men in front and two behind.