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I propose, in this paper, to review briefly the present stateof the question, and of the answer thereto. Within the last twenty years a great advance has been made with regard to it; and we owe this advance almost entirely to the researches of two savants, Hofraths Dr. J. Wiesner and Dr. J. Karabacek, both Professors in the University of Vienna. In the following review I shall state the results of those researches, together with such conclusions as appear to me legitimately deducible from them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The subjoined catalogue describes a collection comprising 368 separate texts mainly in Sanskrit, which were collected by Dr. M. A. Stein and acquired at his expense chiefly at Śrīnagar during his visits to Kashmir between 1888 and 1905. Apart from texts needed by Dr. Stein for his labours, during 1888–99, on his critical edition and annotated translation of Kalhana's Rājataraṅgiṇī, numerous MSS. were purchased by him either to assist the work of fellow-scholars in Europe or on account of their philological or palæographical interest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

“ Rough list of Dr. Stein's MSS. sent by Dr. Barnett ”—with brief descriptions.1. (1) “ 9, 1 Brāhmī fol. C.A.,” unknown language, probably a Prajñā-pāramitā.(2) Inner cover marked C xlvi (Suppl.) Large C.A. leaf 6.vi.07 ; outer cover marked Ch. Large C.A. Brāhmī frgt.; part of the former. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the paper was read at a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, some exceptions were taken to it by Lord Stanley of Alderley. A report of these has been added to the report of the paper in the pages of the Society's Journal, and may possibly give occasion for doubt on a subject which I think of much importance to Mohammedans in British India and even of some to the Government itself. I therefore propose to answer the exceptions in detail and at some length. But it seems necessary, for the better understanding of them, that I should first state briefly the principles on which the argument of the paper was founded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When this paper was first presented to the Council in July last, I objected to its being received, inasmuch as it contained a vast amount of irrelevant matter, and personalities, which I should regret to see introduced into any discussion in this Society. Since then Mr. Grote, in the exercise of a discretion given him by the author, has cut it down to about one-half its original length, and now presents it in a form to which I personally can have no possible objection. I would only, however, like to observe, that the title now given to it is a little misleading. It would hardly be worth while, if an attempt to fix their dates were all the paper contained, to print a disquisition on the age of the Caves at Ajantá by a person who has never visited them, and who, though eminent as a Sanskrit scholar, has hitherto shown no aptitude for, or knowledge of, archaeological subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among the various wonderful inventions, marking the astonishing advances which the Chinese had so early made towards civilization, is that of Paper-Money, which dates as far back as the year 119 before our era. The cause that led to its introduction was the low state of the finances of the Government, who, after various other experiments, issued at last regular paper assignats, which, from the ponderous nature of the rude coin then in use, and the security that the warranty of government afforded, soon obtained extensive circulation. The government who had thus introduced this new currency, made it an object of much legislation; and various were the schemes that were started and remoulded, in the hope of permanently establishing its use. But the numerous intestine wars, and the repeated subversion of dynasties that followed, tended seriously to detract from the credit of the government; and thus, owing to its bad faith, and the excessive issues, a complete failure of the system was the result, after a lapse of five centuries having been spent in unsuccessful attempts to establish it. Government paper-money seems to have disappeared in the early part of the late Ming dynasty; and the Manchus, on their accession, never attempted to revive its use. To Klaproth we are indebted for very elaborate researches on this interesting and oft-discussed subject. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The number of subjects now labelled as Oriental and the increasing development of knowledge concerning each, of these subjects, make it materially impossible for an individual to derive more than a fraction of the advantages offered by a Congress such as that recently held at Leyden. There were no fewer than nine sections (in fact, there should have been ten, a special section for Islamic Art having been eliminated) and over 200 papers were read during the five days that the Congress lasted, some of the sections sitting nearly five hours a day. It was inevitable that keenly interested delegates should again and again have to choose between equally attractive papers, especially where the third section (Central and Near Asia) and the eighth (Islam) were concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the publication of my paper on Indian Theistic Reformers in the January number of this Journal, I have received the following letter from Mr. Krishna Bihari Sen, brother of Mr. Keshab Chandar Sen [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The following notes on Indian Chronology were written in 1874, and were originally intended for the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, they were printed off, I received a letter from Dr. Bühler, of Bombay, in answer to one I had written to him, on hearing a rumour that he had found Kanishka's name in one of the Puranas. I consequently refrained from publishing them, till it was known what bearing this discovery might have on the questions at issue. In order to ventilate the question, however, I had them printed, and in March, 1875, circulated them among my friends. As nothing has since been heard of Dr. Bühler's discovery, and recent excavations in Afghanistan throw new light on the question, I now submit them for republication where they were originally intended to appear. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

E. W. West (born 1824, died 1905) received the Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1900. In his answer to a letter of congratulations sent to him by a fellow worker in the field of Iranian studies, L. C. Casartelli, later Bishop of Salford, he describes how he became attracted to the study of Zoroastrianism and this curriculum vitae was published in part in a French translation in Casartelli's obituary notice of West (Le Musèon, 1905). West's translations of the main works of later Zoroastrianism make difficult reading for those unacquainted with the language of the original texts, but never fail to elicit admiration on the part of modern scholars who cannot but acknowledge that West, for all his selftraining, possessed an unparalleled grasp of Pahlavi long before the reading of the script acquired some measure of certainty through the discovery of the Manichsean texts from Turfan. Still more valuable than his translations were his numerous notes on Pahlavi MSS., scattered throughout his introductions to his Pahlavi Texts and rather summarily collected in his article in the Grundriss. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the immediate tasks in the field of Mongol studies is to take stock of the prints and manuscripts scattered in many different libraries. As a small contribution to this task there follows a list of the contents of a collection of Mongol manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge. There are thirty-four texts (plus one in Tibetan written in an ornamental Tibetan script), the majority of them ritualistic in content. There is no general title to the collection, and it gives the impression of being a detached fragment from a private library. There are 389 folios of slightly varying dimensions, the approximate measurements being 28 by 6·5 cm. Eleven of the texts, (Nos. 1–11), totalling 213 folios, are written on paper of uniform quality, and some of the remaining texts can also be sorted into groups on the basis of similarity in the quality of the paper. The folios are contained as two pothis between brocade-covered boards. When first inspected the folios were found to be rather muddled, but it was possible to re-sort them into their correct order within the individual texts, and to establish the probable completeness of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In page 99 of this volume, in the remarks upon a passage recording the death of Bardes, the brother of Cambyses, I stated that we have at the beginning of line 23 ońly a few characters as the representatives of nearly two lines in the Persian original. There was obviously something wanting, and the word yufri, left incomplete at the end of line 22, ought to have aided in suggesting the omission of a line in my copy; but I had confidence in the pantograph, and made no further investigation, taking it for granted that all was right. I have since been informed, however, by Colonel Rawlinson, who made his copy from the rock itself, that I have left out a line; and a reference to the cast shows that this is the case. The omission arose from the crumpled state of the paper impression, which had been folded upon that very line, so as to obliterate every trace of a character, coupled with the fact that the instrument was shifted, and a new commencement made upon the same spot. The line is much injured, and these are the only characters preserved by Colonel Rawlinson:— [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During his eventful career in India, lasting from 1799 to 1823, Colonel James Tod collected a large number of manuscripts in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, and Gujarati. Of these the most valuable were the many historical writings— regular narratives in both prose and verse, panegyrical compositions, pedigrees, and other miscellanea—from which he derived most of the information embodied in his great work, the Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Most of them are in Hindi; a very few are in Sanskrit. Another group, which is not much less important, consists of metrical tales in old Hindi and Gujarati dialects, chiefly illustrative of Jain doctrine, together with some prose stories. There are also other Jain writings, viz. a few scriptures in Prakrit, commentaries upon them in Sanskrit and vernaculars, hagiological poems in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and vernaculars, and various doctrinal works. Finally there are many works representing various phases of Indian culture, e.g. Sanskrit classics and books on grammar, lexicography, astronomy, and astrology, vernacular writings on divination and farriery, etc. These manuscripts passed into the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society as a legacy from Colonel Tod, who for several years acted as the Society's librarian, and form the basis of the collection described in the following Catalogue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

About 100 members assembled for the preliminary meeting on Sunday night, the 4th September, in the Whitehall Rooms of the H6tel Metropole, where refreshments were served. The Chairman and some other members of the Organizing Committee received the guests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This list contains the titles of the Raffles and Farquhar MSS., drawn from Van der Tuuk's catalogue as edited by R. Rost in Miscellaneous Papers relating to Indo-China and the Indian Archipelago, vol. ii, 1887, pp. 1–56 (after the original in JRAS., N.S., vol. ii, pp. 85–135, revised from the Dutch translation in BKI, III, 1, pp. 409–474, and with additional notes by Rost). I have added dates of MSS. and references to Van der Tuuk's notes about them found in some Leiden MSS. For the Maxwell collection this list reproduces Blagden's inventory (JRAS., 1899, pp. 121–129) with small corrections and the addition of other Malay manuscripts since presented by other donors. Some references to printed editions for which the R.A.S. MSS. have been used are also added. In a few cases some new notes about the contents of the texts have been given, mostly taken from information supplied by Sir R. O. Winstedt, who has also made the descriptions of the additional MSS. Maxwell 106 et sqq. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the highly valuable collection of MSS. which Dr. M. A. Stein brought home from his remarkable expedition to East Turkestan, some are found written in the “runic” script we now know from inscriptions in Mongolia and Siberia, and of which the recent investigations in Turfan and the adjacent localities also have brought interesting specimens to light. Dr. Stein has done me the honour to request me to publish the MSS. in this kind of script found by him, and it has been a pleasure to me to do so in this preliminary paper, trusting that in a later, final paper I shall succeed in clearing up several of the mysteries and doubts which I have been obliged to leave unsolved here. It has been of great assistance to me that owing to Dr. Stein's kindness I have been able to make use of the two original MSS., here designated I and II, in one of our public libraries in Copenhagen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The following article is based on a paper that was read to the Christian Orient Section of the Twentieth Congress of Orientalists in Brussels, September, 1938. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The collection of Sanskrit MSS. described below forms part of the library of the late Professor Fr. Max Müller, which was acquired in July, 1901, for the Japanese University of Tokiyo. It consists of 82 codices, of which 15 are tracings and 26 are transcripts of MSS. chiefly in the Berlin Royal Library, the Munich University Library, the Paris National Library, the India Office Library, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The remaining 41 MSS. were received from India through the agency of the late Dr. J. R. Ballantyne, of the Benares Sanskrit College, Professor Gr. Bühler, and Dr. FitzEdward Hall. All these MSS. represent Vedic works, chiefly connected with the Ṛgveda, and have been more or less used in the preparation of Professor Max Müller's edition of the Ṛgveda-saṁhitā with Sāyaṇa's Commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

These drawings were first brought to notice by the late Mr. Archibald Carlleyle and myself, and were discovered by us independently of each other in 1880, he working in Rewah and Mirzāpur and I in Banda. I took up the subject from the anthropological and zoological side entirely, Mr. Carlleyle from the antiquarian or philological side. He evidently had made some important discoveries of ancient records, but, as he desired to work them himself, he imparted no information on either the nature or the localities of his discoveries, and his knowledge has died with him. The first scientific paper on the drawings was by myself published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1883, and was entitled “On the recent existence of Rhinoceros Indicus in the North-West Provinces, and a description of an archaic rock painting from Mirzapur, representing the hunting of this animal” (Journ., lii, part 2, 1883, pp. 56 to 64, with two plates). This article excited much interest in Europe, and great things were expected from the discovery. I regret that I have no copy of the paper. A short paragraph is also devoted to the subject in the Gazetteer of Mirzāpur. There is a further paper in the Proc. Asiatic Society, Bengal, for 1884, on the durability of haematite drawings on sandstone rocks, by myself also. Shortly afterwards Mr. A. M. Markham, C.S., noticed a few words written in this pigment in ancient characters at Chachaie Koond, or the Falls of the Tons in Rewah. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This splendid MS. on red and blue satin is, in fact, the first that has reached Europe in the language and writing of the Lolos, almost unknown a few months ago; before the important Journey of Exploration in Western Sz'e chuen, by Mr. E. Colborne Baber, now Secretary of the Chinese Legation at Peking, noticed by him in a paper addressed to the Royal Geographical Society of this country. From this paper we learn that Mr. Baber displayed a remarkable diligence in procuring materials for the study of the language and writing of the Lolo population; his paper comprising a vocabulary, copy and tracing of three documents in the Lolo writing; but, till the arrival of this wonderful MS., it must be confessed that we had no other Lolo documents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society in the spring of 1877, and printed in the tenth volume, new series (p. 344), of its Journal, a suggestion was made that the natural phenomenon known to Muslims of every clime as the “False Dawn” was no other than what is known in Europe by the name of “The Zodiacal Light.”Through the liberality of the Society's rule by which a certain number of copies are furnished to the writers of papers printed in its Journal, this subject was brought to the notice of several of our most talented astronomers, in the hope that they might adopt a method of authoritatively settling the question, which is not only interesting to Orientalists as one of lexicology, but also to the astronomical world as involving a point in the archæology of their special science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to draw the attention of scholars to the existence of a hitherto unknown Arabic poem concerned with the subject of Joseph and his brethren, which was discovered in 1972 in an uncatalogued manuscript in the possession of the Department of Semitic Studies of the University of Leeds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The important rôle which the Kārimī merchants played in Oriental trade at the end of the Middle Ages has been touched upon by some outstanding orientalists. The last to treat the subject exhaustively was W. J. Fischel in his paper “Über die Gruppe der Kārimī-Kaufleute”, published in 1937 in the series Analecta Orientalia (of the Pontifical Bible Institute) no. 14. The Arabic historical works of the later Middle Ages contain, however, additional material, which partly corroborates and partly modifies Fischel's conclusions. A good many of the notices on the Kārimīs to be quoted in this paper are taken from the hitherto unpublished chronicle Inbā' al-ghumr bi-abnā al-'umr of Ibn Ḥajar al-'Asqalānī (d. 1449), MS. Constantinople, Yeni Cami 814 and the Who's Who of the fifteenth century composed by al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497) and called ad-Ḍau' al-lāmi' fī a'yān al-qarn al-tāsi' (Cairo, 1353–55). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article I have collected a certain number of documents where of the subject matter has at least some special connexion with the Śa-cu district. A good portion of the matter contained in the previous article (“I: The Ḫa-za,” supra, pp. 51–85) may be regarded as no less apposite here, and the reader, comparing the two papers, may find on the whole little dissimilarity in the contents, except that in the former case we have adhered closely to the Ḫa-za people. In order to show some system in the papers, the references in which I am naturally not in a position to restrict, I have grouped them under four heads, representing the chief purpose of their selection, namely (A) Places, (B) Clans and Nomenclature, (0) Paper and Copying of MSS., (D) Monasteries and a Historic Foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The selection of a title is sometimes a choice of evils. Which shall most move us, the desire to attract the many, or the fear of offending the few?For the heading of this paper, the original aim had been laudable. Pith, brevity, and point were to combine with brilliant exactness of definition, alluring to the reader and doing justice to the theme. “ That,” as they say in the street, “ was the idea.” Followed an interval for intellectual refreshment and repose, and then, “ sudden in a minute,” in a flash, was captured the caption. But the disillusion of it! Gone were the pith and the brevity, and in their stead appeared a sesquipedalian pomposity. But however ponderously, the present title has the merit that it does precisely formulate the baffling and hitherto little noticed phenomena of substitutional types to which this paper essays to call attention by the illustration of a few out of many examples. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a former paper I dealt with the rulers of Lāhijān and Fūman in Gīlān, and now give an account of the remaining local dynasties and petty rulers of that province. The sources from which I have gathered my information have already been mentioned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A paper of prime importance for Hittite studies has been read by Professor Fr. Delitzsch before the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences at Berlin. The Oriental Museum at Berlin has obtained a collection of cuneiform tablets from Boghaz Keui, among which are twenty-six fragments of vocabularies, copies of which will appear in the first part of the volume of Boghaz Keui inscriptions which Dr. Weidner is engaged in publishing. The vocabularies contain lists of Sumerian words with their pronunciation as well as their equivalents in Assyrian (or, as Professor Delitzsch calls it, Accadian) and Hittite. The Sumerologist will be grateful for the authoritative information they at last give as to the pronunciation of the Sumerian ideographs; the “Hittitologist” will be still more grateful for the first insight they afford into the character of the Hittite language spoken at Boghaz Keui. In Professor Delitzsch's paper the words are given in transcription. The paper will doubtless be the subject of much philological commentary. Meanwhile I offer a few notes upon it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]