In a previous contribution (No. IV, in this Journal for 1908, pp. 997 ff.), discussing Dṛiḍhabala's share in the composition of the Caraka Saṁhitā, I had indicated (ib., pp. 1017–18) what appeared to be conclusive evidence of the truth of one of the two traditional serial orders of the chapters of its Cikitsita Sthāna. That was the order which is shown in column 2 of the Table (ib., p. 1000), and which is adopted by Gangādhar in his well-known Berhampur edition of the Saṁhitā.

This one of the most northerly of the Kurdish dialects, spoken by a large tribe of Kurds inhabiting the mountains around Erzerum and to the east towards Bayazid, may be reckoned as one of the most important of the Turko-Kurd tongues on account of the regularity of conjugations of its verbs and richness of grammatical form as compared with other Kurdish tongues. With very few differences it may be classed as a companion dialect to that termed by Lerch and others who have studied northern Kurdish dialects, Kermānjī. A very harsh pronunciation is adopted by the Shādī Kurds, which renders their dialect incomprehensible to the southern Kurd. As in the Kermānjī, the influence of the Chaldean (Neo-Syriac) dialects is here and there apparent, and in a few instances Arabic is employed. Turkish, which might be expected to have furnished a proportion of the common words used, has been very sparsely employed. Considered as a whole, and allowing for differences created by corruption of pronunciation, the dialect appears as a well-preserved old Persian tongue. The Shādi Kurds, in common with some other tribes of the south, claim that their dialect is ancient Persian, and have reserved for it the name of Fārisī.

Hitherto our authentic knowledge of the early history of Tibet has been derived, with one solitary exception, not from any records in the country itself, but solely from the references, contemporary and otherwise, embedded in the imperial chronicles of China, which have been rendered accessible to English students through the excellent translations of Dr. Bushell and Mr. Rockhill. The one indigenous early record we have possessed is the imprint of the treaty edict of “822 A.D. with the Emperor Mu Tsung”, which Dr. Bushell procured at Peking and published in this Journal in 1880. That edict, however, though affording an interesting side-glimpse into the state of civilization in Tibet at that period, and incidentally confirming the Chinese accounts, yielded few important historical data; and no other local source of trustworthy early history has been forthcoming. For the Tibetans, unlike the Chinese, are notably deficient in the true historical sense.

It was, apparently, Sir William Jones who introduced the to the Western world. Among his works is a translation of the twenty stories which form the illustrations to the twenty sections (maqālat) of the poem. In the advertisement prefixed to his translation Sir William remarks that the warmest admirers of cannot but allow that the sententious brevity of his couplets often renders them obscure, and he warns those who do not know Persian that they have no right to judge from his version of the merits of the original. His renderings are indeed admittedly so literal as to be arid and hardly intelligible, and were intended only to assist the student. Probably he meant to include them in his Grammar. One of the stories, however, namely the tenth, was so interesting and beautiful that it attracted attention in spite of the baldness and incompleteness of the translation, and has often been quoted and admired. Hammer-Purgstall translated it into German, and there is a versified rendering in Alger's Poetry of the East, Boston, 1856. I offer the following prose translation of the story and its moral. I have consulted the Persian commentary on the by Muḥammad b. Qiyām, and several MSS. of the poem, but, in spite of this, one or two lines are to me very obscure.

The fragments of Hittite cuneiform tablets from Boghaz Keui, copies of which I publish herewith, all contain religious or ritual texts. Many of them must have formed part of the tablets I have published in earlier numbers of this Journal, or at all events of the same series of tablets as that to which the latter belong. No. 1 is in the possession of the Rev. Mr. McNaughten, Nos. 3—5 of the Rev. Dr. G. E. White; the rest are in my own collection. As they were all found before the German excavations were begun at Boghaz Keui, it would seem that the peasants had lighted upon a portion of the library in which the religious texts were kept. This would have been in a temple rather than in the archive-chamber where the political and historical documents discovered by Dr. Winckler were preserved.

We could hardly fail to read with interest and close attention Professor Hultzsch's note, published at p. 728 above, on the Rūpnāth recension of the Last Edict of Aśōka: particularly because his views are calculated to be completely subversive of the chronological arrangement laid out by me at p. 27 above, and to require us to find an entirely new date for the death of Buddha. Accepting what is plain, that the figures 256 are a date, he has revived the view that they mark the number of years elapsed since the renunciation of Buddha, when he left his home and went forth as a wandering ascetic mendicant into the houseless state, in the search for true knowledge.

The inscriptions connected with the Myazedi pagoda at Pagan, Burma, are inscribed on two pillars. One of these pillars stands within the walls of the pagoda and is four-sided, having four inscriptions of the same general purport expressed in four different languages, viz., Pali, Burmese, Talaing, and an unidentified language. The other pillar is in the Kubyaukkyi cave, to the west of the pagoda. It has three inscriptions, which are apparently replicas of those that are on the first pillar excepting the Talaing version, which (it seems) is wanting; but they are not in such a good state of preservation as are those on the first pillar.

In reviewing the discoveries that have been made by the Archæological Department in India during the year 1908–9, I propose to start with one of unique historical interest—the only lithic record that has yet been found in which reference is made to the Indo-Greek rulers of the Panjab.

The circumstances in which this inscription has been discovered are stated by Mr. Marshall on p. 1053 f. above; and a reproduction of it is given in Plate I, a, with a reading and translation by Dr. Bloch. I edit the record, as an accompaniment to Mr. Marshall's remarks, from a photograph and an ink-impression received from him: owing, however, to the manner in which the record had been covered with paint, the ink-impression does not help much beyond the photograph. The writing covers an area about 1 ft. 10 in. wide by 1 ft. 8½ in. high. The size of the letters, that is, of those which are formed between the top and bottom lines of writing without any projections above or below, ranges from about 1⅛ to 1⅞ inches.

I Read the two lines of this inscription, illustrated in the plate at p. 1054 above, thus:—

Trīni(triṃni ?) amutapadāni [kā]le(?) anuṭhitāni neyā ti v[uttaṃ?] damaṃ cāga apramādo.

Neyā is probably the Sanskrit jñeyāt. Amutapadāni and cāga stand for the Sanskrit amṛitapadāni and tyāga. Anuṭhitāni (i.e. anuṭṭh°) is the Sanskrit anuṣṭhitāni.