Professor Louis Massignon, the value of whose contributions to the study of Sufism cannot be overestimated, gives a short but penetrating account of the doctrines of Junayd in his Essai sur les Origines du Lexique Technique de la Mystique Musulmane. This account is preceded by an analysis of the contents of the manuscript of Junayd's opuscula which is preserved at Istanbul. In his Recueil de Textes Inédits Massignon gives extracts of this manuscript. It has recently been my good fortune, through the generosity of the Egyptian University, to obtain a photograph of this manuscript—and I must not omit to acknowledge the kindly services of Dr. Ritter in this connection—as a preliminary to the fulfilment of what has been for some time my immediate intention, namely, to write a monograph on the life and doctrines of Junayd, and to edit all his surviving reliquiae.

A frequently quoted authority on the musical instruments of the Arabs of Spain is a certain Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shalāḥī, to whom is ascribed a book entitled the Kitāb al-imtā' wa'l-intifā' fī mas'alat samā' al-samā' … (“The Book of Joy and Profit on the Question of Listening to Music…”), the unique copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca National in Madrid. Unfortunately, so far as the present writer is aware, there does not appear to be a solitary instance of the original having been consulted by the several musicographers who have referred to this work. In almost every case the immediate or ultimate source of information has been Casiri's catalogue of the Escorial Library, which was once the home of this manuscript. A closer sanitation of this manuscript is long overdue and one day we hope to have a translation made for inclusion in our Collection of Oriental Writers on Music. Meanwhile, it appears urgent that a short notice of the work should be given for the following reasons: (1) Musicographers have erroneous impressions of the nature of this treatise; (2) the date and authorship require consideration; (3) the author's or copyist's name has appeared in so many different forms in European languages that this one individual is being registered under various names as different persons; (4) writers continue to depend on Casiri, whose list of musical instruments is somewhat faulty.

It is a fact that hardly requires repetition that one of the edicts on the pillar of Aśoka standing inside Akbar's fort at Allahabad is addressed to the Mahāmātras of Kauśāmbī (modern Kosam on the bank of the Jamna, about thirty miles from Allahabad) whence it was removed to Allahabad by some king. Cunningham suggested that Firūz Shāh, who is known to have removed two other Aśokan columns to Delhi from Meerut (Mīrath) and Topra, was the author also of this removal from Kosam to Allahabad. On this Hultzsch makes the following remarks: “But while Delhi was the capital of Firōz Shāh, Allahabad was founded, or rather re-founded two centuries after him by Akbar. This ruler may have removed from Kōsam the Allahabad pillar, on which the inscriptions of his favourite Bīrbal and of his son Jahāngīr are engraved. In this case the pillar would have been still standing at Kōsam when the inscription of Samudragupta was incised on it.” The divergence between the views of these two scholars makes the subject worthy of a fresh study.

The four unfamiliar syllables in the title of this paper seemed as originally written so like the heading of some important appeal from one of the less known Colonies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, that a more informative sub-title appeared advisable.

The verses that give the date of composition of the poem are the 34th and 35th dohās of the Bālakāṇḍa in Rāmadāsa Gaur's edition, and may be translated as follows:—

“Having so removed all doubts,

And having placed on my head the pollen-dust of my master's lotus-feet,

I again pray to all with joined palms

That I may not be blamed as I make this Tale.

In this Journal, ante, pp. 307 f., in an article with the above title, Dr. C. L. Fábri draws attention to the affinity that seemingly exists between symbols found on the Mohenjo-daro and Harappā seals and those on certain punch-marked coins. As the impression might be conveyed by this paper that Dr. Fábri was the first to be struck by this correspondence, it is only fair to note that two Indian scholars had previously called public attention to this similarity, citing several of the identical examples now given by Dr. Fábri. Dr. Pran Nath noticed the resemblance between the signs five years ago, and made a special study of the punch-marked coins in the British Museum in this connection; he referred to the question on more than one occasion, and published specific examples in the Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. vii (1931), Supplement, pp. 11 f. Mr. Durga Prasad also, in pamphlets and lectures and in the thesis submitted to the Numismatic Society of India, which won the gold medal of the Society in 1933 (at Baroda), had dealt with the question.

Indologists have at this time of day come to know how prominent is the part played by numbered categories in the Pali Canon. The whole of the Fourth Nikāya, the Anguttara, is composed of such. The two last Suttantas of the First Nikāya: the “Sangīti” and the “Das-uttara”, are composed of such. Five Suttas of the Second Collection: “Bahuvedaniya, Chabbisodhana, Bahudhātuka, Mahācattarīsaka, Pañcattaya,” have numerical title and treatment. The Third Nikāya alone, the Saṃyutta, has not conformed to this method. In the case of the Anguttara- and Dĩgha-Nikayas the subjects are not only grouped under numbers, they are taken in arithmetical progression: the Ones, Twos, Threes, etc. (That the Anguttara progression should cease at the Elevens, as though it were a cricketing chronicle, has not yet been inquired into, if I may except myself (in my re-written Home University Library Buddhism, 1934).) The lists are apparently out to exclude nothing which will have been of doctrinal importance to the compilers, whenever and wherever that compilation took place.