This “Sanad” had been issued in favour of Mahārājā Bijaysingh of Mārwār by the Mughal Emperor Shāh 'Ālam II of Delhi on the 9th Jumāda-ul-ākhir of the 17th year of his reign.

Emperor Shāh 'Ālam II, whose original name was 'Ālīgauhar, was son of Emperor 'Ālamgīr II.

The connection of Naṣīru'd-dīn Ṭūsī with the Ismailites is a well-known fact, familiar to every student of Persian literature. Even a beginner cannot pass without paying attention to his important treatise on ethics, the Akhlāq-i-Nāṣirī. This latter work was composed for and dedicated to the enlightened Ismailite governor (ra'īs) of the province of Quhistān, Nāṣiru'd-dīn Muḥtasham, or 'Abdu'r-Raḥīm b. Abī Manṣūr, of Qā'in, who was a well-known patron of men of letters. The original version of the work (as Ṭūsī himself states in the preface to the book as it stands at present) was subsequently altered by him when he dissociated himself from the Ismailites; it included apparently a doxology with praises to Ismailite Imams.

Some apology is perhaps needed for publishing these notes, which are not the work of a professed Pali scholar, and I would plead in extenuation that, apart from a few cases suggesting new interpretations of certain difficult terms, most of the words have been chosen for discussion because of their interest for Sanskrit lexicography and other general Indian subjects and that I have avoided Buddhist technical terms.

This year M. L. Ch. Watelin, director of excavations for the Oxford Field Museum Expedition at Kish, has found another seal of the early Indus Valley civilization at plain level, 9 metres below the surface of the soil. According to our stratifications at this site, the object should be pre-Sargonic, but it was found with a stone pommel bearing an inscription clearly not earlier than Sargon of Agade. Both objects, therefore, may have fallen from above.

The importance of the history of costumes and fashions cannot be emphasized enough. Concerning India practically nothing has been published in this line, barring some discussions on the costumes of the Mughal period. A thorough examination of small details would possibly yield very valuable results, and the following two brief notes may be considered as a modest contribution to such a study of Indian head-dress.

1. Among the less common Chinese decorative or symbolic themes is one whose norm may reasonably be regarded as a semi-circle terminating at each end in an animal's head. But arcs of the circle both less and more than the half are perhaps more frequent, and the curvature is likewise bent, as the applicational needs demand, into other modes of arch or loop. Instances of penannular bracelets and torques in other lands are perhaps also derivatives when their terminals are thus enriched.

In a previous article I have connected Sanskrit and Pali bharu “sea” and Pali maru “desert”, “sand-desert”, and have shown that these words were probably borrowed by Indo-Aryan from one or several non-Aryan languages. Malay baroh denotes “low-lying country”, “sea-shore”, “sea”. The dialects of the Malay Peninsula have baruh “plain”, “flatland”, baruk, barok “shore”, and bâruh “sea”. Sometimes the initial is reduced. In Bahnar âr denotes “marsh”, “swampy district”, or “low-lying damp terrain near to watercourses”. Annamite has preserved the initial, but the final liquid has become i: *bar > bai “coast”, “shore”, “strand”.

It has been suggested by Dr. Belvalkar that the original commentary on the Sāṁkhya Kārikā, which was translated by Paramārtha into Chinese, was none other than the Māṭhara-Vṛtti and that such differences as there are between the two are not different in kind from the variations between different recensions, such as the Chinese and the Japanese. He cites several instances of agreement between the Chinese commentary and the Māṭhara-Vṛtti, one of the most notable of these being the initial story of how Kapila came to impart the teaching to Āsuri. A closer examination of the two commentaries would, however, seem to reveal certain doctrinal differences of some importance, variations such as seem not to be susceptible of being explained away on the basis of differences of version. These differences throw considerable doubt on the possibility of the Māṭhara-Vṛtti having been the original translated by Paramārtha. It is the object of this paper to set out the results of a fairly full analysis made by the present writer. While no positive conclusion is possible, it would appear that Professor Keith's suggestion of both commentaries having drawn from some common original is, perhaps, the most plausible view.

The translation and publication of this article have been unavoidably delayed by the pressure of other work. For typographical reasons the Sakai words, written originally in the Anthropos alphabet, have been transcribed into the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association, and an explanation of some of the symbols used may be helpful.

The Taittīnya-Āraṇyaka mentions, for the first time, the various constituents of the ancient science of phonetics:

Prap. vii, An. 2.

At the present day no Śikṣā work contemporaneous with the above and comprising all the said parts is to be traced. In general, the Prätiśākhyas and the still later Śikṣās deal at sufficiently great length with traditional Sanskrit phonetics of their own times; but the common source from which Patañali derived most of his quotations, which was afterwards used by Candragomin to form his Varṇa-sūtras, and which has been extensively quoted and reproduced by subsequent commentators of such high repute as Jayāditya, Jinendrabuddhi, the author of Prakriyā-Saṅgraha of the Jain Śākaṭāyana School, Sṣṭridhara and a host of others, was little known till recent times.

In his interesting note on the Rāīsīna grant Pt. B. N. Reu describes the puppet ruler who was set up by Ghāzī-ud-dīn after the murder of 'Ālamgīr II as Muhī-us-sunnat, with the title of Shāh Jahān II. He has evidently followed the Sairul-mutaākhīrīn (III, p. 375, Cambray's edition). But Mr. S. H. Hodivala has shown (p. 310, “Historical studies in Mughal numismatics”) that there is better authority for describing him as the son of Muhī-us-sunnat, and that his name was Muhī-ul-millat or Muhī-ud-dīn. In any case he was the third Shāh Jahān, as this regal title had also been assumed by Rafi'-ud-daula in a.h. 1131 (a.d. 1719).

In an article in the Morgenbladet (Oslo), of the 18th April, 1931, it is announced that the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture have decided to publish a work on the Burushaski Language of Hunza Nagar by Lieut.-Col. D. L. R. Lorimer, an old and valued contributor to this Journal. The linguistic relationships of the Burushaski language present a baffling problem for the elucidation of which Colonel Lorimer's work is expected to provide peculiarly reliable material.