Inscription on a limestone slab, 27 ½ in. 7 ½in.; obtained from a man who has done extensive digging in Haid Ibn ‘Aqil, the necropolis of Timna’, and now in Major, M. D. Van Lessen's possession. Plate I.

THE origin of the term miḥrāb is somewhat obscure. In Islām it is usually particularly applied to the prayer-niche, and the article in the Encyclopaedia of Islām2 treats of it only as such, yet this technical usage of the word seems to be derived from a more primitive and general meaning, and on the balance of the evidence its emergence as a name for a part of the sanctuary appears to be Islāmic only. Miḥrāb has been discussed by Nöldeke,3 by Horovitz,4 and by Landberg.5 It has been discussed in connexion with architectural studies by Creswell,6 and by Sauvaget.7 These studies cite a number of references and sources which I have re-examined, but do not propose to repeat in toto. Each of these authorities shows conclusively that the employment in the technical sense of prayer-niche is not early.

The following description of Nambudiri Ṛgvedic recitation was made possible by Mr. J. F. Staal who very kindly lent the recordings he had taken in Kerala in 1957. Mr. Staal has already written on the Nambudiris in general as well as on their chanting in a publication1 to which the reader is referred for a very full account beyond the scope of the present pages. Apart from treating the saṃhitā; recitation in somewhat greater detail, an attempt will be made below to amplify some of the conclusions hinted at in a previous article with regard to the nature of the Vedic accent.2

One of the most important factors which distinguish the VaibhĀsikaṣika Abhidharma from the TheravĀda Abhidharma is a category called the viprayukta-saṃskĀras. The disputes on the reality of the dharmas included under this category dominate some of the major works on Abhidharma, especially the Abhidharma-kośa-bhĀṣsya of Vasubandhu and the ShpuṭĀarthĀ of Yaśomitra. An analysis of these dharmas is found in a few pioneering works like those of McGovern, Stcherbatsky, and others, but very little is kown about their origin.

IT is more than 20 years since Durga Prasad published his ‘ Observations on different types of silver punch marked coins, their periods and locale ’1. In this lengthy paper one section was devoted to demonstrating that certain signs can be regarded as Mauryan royal marks (pp. N 61-7). This conclusion and the many probabilities it raises have long been widely accepted in India, but in Europe acceptance has been more reserved. We are not here concerned with Prasad' main argument but with the section indicated above, our purpose being to restate that part of the evidence and consider its probable meaning. From some points of view Prasad's advocacy was imperfect, for in presenting his case he made certain assumptions which we are unable to accept, and thus weakened the force of his argument.

It is a surprising fact that the Chinesische Grammatik (1881) of G. v.d. Gabelentz remains the only grammar of Classical Chinese widely available in a Western language. Joseph L. M. Mullie's Grondbeginselen van de Chinese letterkundige taal is accessible only to those who read Flemish, and the Structural analysis of literary Chinese of H. E. Shadick and Hsin-min Wu has not yet appeared in printed form. The publication of this grammatical analysis of LAC (Late Archaic Chinese) by Professor Dobson, Head of the Department of East Asiatic Studies at Toronto, is therefore an event of great importance to sinologists and to linguists generally. Its object is to establish, on a purely formal basis, the grammar of the literary language of the fourth and third centuries B.C. For descriptive purposes this period is taken as a unity, ignoring the peculiarities of particular texts and the dialects which may underlie them. It excludes, not only the Early Archaic of the ‘Songs’ and ‘History’, but the Middle Archaic of the ‘Spring and autumn annals’ and the early ‘Analects’. Professor Dobson seeks to liberate the grammar of LAC from all the Western categories so far imposed on it (parts of speech, subject/predicate, subject/object, case, tense) and to establish, with the aid of a new and often alarming terminology, new categories distinguished by purely formal criteria.