W. Schmidt has established, as is well known, a new family of human speech, termed by him the “ Austric ” family. It was constituted by joining an “ Austronesian ” and an “ Austroasiatic ” group of languages; the latter term was coined by Schmidt when he found that the Mon-Khmer and some other languages of the East are kindred to the Muṇḍa languages of India.

Schmidt's treatise on the matter was declared by some scholars to be “ masterly ”, whereas others, so Przyluski, advised reserve. As a matter of fact, the existence of an “ Austric” family of languages—the most widely diffused on earth—is actually uncontested.

That the morphology and the grammar of the Muṇḍa and the Mon-Khmer languages are quite different, is admitted by W. Schmidt himself. Thus he based the relationship upon some similarities in phonetics, on the use of infixes in both languages, and on the results he obtained by comparing words.

Haraprasād Shāstrī a publié dans le Journal de la Société Asiatique du Bengale, vol. LXVII, part i, n° 2, p. 175–84 (1898) un petit traité attribué à Āryadeva. Quelques lacunes. Le titre Cittaviśuddhi est indiqué dans le dernier vers: indication confirmée par le Subhāṣitasaṃgraha (éd. C. Bendall, Muséon, 1904) qui cite un long fragment: cittaviśuddhiprakaraṇe āryadevapādair uktam. C. Bendall n’a pas manqué de découvrir dans le Tandjour (Rgyud, 33, Cordier, p. 136) le Cittāvaraṇaviśodhana, d’Āryadeva, trad, par Jñānākara et Thsul-khrims-rgyal-ba, et de constater l’identité des deux ouvrages. Enfin, dans la première partie de ses Études sur āryadeva et son Catuḥśataka, 1923, P. L. Vaidya a diligemment résumé les doctrines du Cittaviśuddhi ou Cittāvaraṇaviśodhana.

C’est du Tantrisme très évolué et très complet. Théorie de l’ekakṣaṇābhisaṃbodhi, acquisition instantanée de la Bodhi; identification du sperme et du sang avec les cinq Bouddhas: pañcabuddhātmakaṃ śukraṃ śoṇitaṃ cāpi tādṛśam; identification de l’œil avec Vairocana, du corps avec Heruka, et le reste. Un curieux morceau de polémique contre les bains dans le Gange: si l’eau purifiait, les poissons seraient des saints.

In the archives of the Da'wat of the Yemen and India a collection of royal letters and decrees (sijillāt) issued by the Fātimid Khalīfa al-Mustanṣir bi'llāh (denoted in the following pages by the letter M.) (died A.H. 487 = A.D. 1094) to the Sulaihids of the Yemen has been preserved, and a manuscript containing this collection of documents has now been acquired by the Library of the School of Oriental Studies, London. The MS. is a modern copy, which belonged to an Ismā'īlī priest in India. I have searched in vain for other copies, but it is quite likely that we might find others in the collections of the Ismā'īlī in the Yemen and India. I give in the following pages a synopsis of the historical matter contained in these documents. Apart from their interesting literary style the letters furnish us with some useful historical data and contemporary evidence for the period covered by them, viz. the forty-four years from A.H. 445 = A.D. 1053 to A.H. 489 = A.D. 1095.

In a previous article I had dealt with Tibetan re in ha-re and re-skan. In attempting to study re in its wider context I wish to exclude from consideration re in re-ba to hope and re in re-źig re-śig ‘little while, moment’. re in re-ba does not seem to call for any special comment. As far as re in re-źig is concerned, it may suffice here to stress the identity of re in re-źig with re in ga-re ‘where?’ on the one hand, and re in re-re ‘each’ on the other. All three cases pre-suppose the basic meaning of ‘part, member, item, etc.’. The specialization in time of re-źig (part = moment)has its spatial counterpart in ga-re (what part, which part(s)? = where ?), ga being identical with ga in ga-na ‘;where’ or in ga-la introducing a rhetorical question (whewre [in all the world]?). In re-re the distributive function is due to respetition (item by item, member [of a group]by member), obviously extended from there also to single re in the meaning of ‘each’.

Yska, in his Nirukta, divides words into four classes: nman (noun), khyta (verb), upasarga (preposition) and nipta (particle). He is the only one of all the ancient writers on grammar who deals at some length with the last mentioned category of particles. The introduction to this class runs as follows:

atha nipt uccvaceṣv artheṣu nipatanti. apy upamrthe. api karmopasaṃgrahrthe. api padapraṇḥ

In a recent article, I argued that the study of early Arabic grammar of the second and third centuries A.H. should be based on the sources of that era, and not on the work of the later grammarians, as these often do not report the real stand of a particular grammarian on a particular issue, and more often misunderstand certain early grammatical concepts, or use their own terminology rather than the older one to elucidate them. The problem becomes more acute when we find that many modern scholars can still only see early Arabic grammar through the eyes of the later grammarians, beginning with the fourth-century figures and probably ending with Suyṭ. Learning about early grammar from later sources is inescapable, given the scarcity of existing second- and third-century sources, but this is nevertheless permissible only if we do not impose the method, and especially the terminology, of the later authors on early grammar.

A passage of the tale of Husrav and the Page (Pahl. Texts, pp. 29-30, in Unvala's edition, § 30) may form the starting-point for a discussion of kavāt. It has not so far been fully translated.

It is recorded in a number of standard works on the western Sudan and northern Nigeria that about the year A.D. 1300 Sākūra, the usurping King of Mali, performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and was murdered by the Danakil on the return journey. Delafosse writes: ‘C'est en revenant des lieux-saints par le Yémen et l'Erythrée, vers l'an 1300, que Sakoura trouva la mort: il fut dévalisé et assassiné par des Danakil sur la côte de Tadjourah, comme il venait de débarquer sur la terre d'Afrique.’ Meek, de Pedrals, and Bovill give the same story, and the last-named comments: ‘He was not returning by the customary route through Cairo, but through Eritrea and the Eastern Sudan, following what has now become the great pilgrim road of West-Central Africa.’ Now if Sākūra was killed in what is to-day French Somaliland, or for that matter anywhere in Somali or Dankali country, he was far to the south of ‘the great pilgrim road’, which does not cross Eritrea at all. Nor is it conceivable that it should ever have done so. It goes through Bornu, Wadai, and Darfur to the Nile and now reaches the Red Sea at Port Sudan. There is no reason why pilgrims should have gone so far to the south of the latitude of Jidda and so have given themselves the task of climbing over the Abyssinian plateau which was, moreover, in Christian hands. A glance at the map will show what a very strange route Sākūra is alleged to have chosen. Having landed at Tajura he would have had three alternatives. The first was to follow approximately the line of the modern railway to Addis Ababa, climbing the steep escarpment in Shoa, and then making his way across Ethiopia and down the other side of the plateau to the Nile valley in Sennar, whence he could have reached Darfur. This would have been very difficult for topographical reasons and would have necessitated a long journey through Christian territory. The second possibility was to travel northwards along the coast until he reached a place such as Suakin where he could have turned westwards and headed for the Nile. This would have been even more difficult, given the character of the Danakil and their country. Last and most difficult of all, he could have attempted the little-used and circuitous route that led through the Sidama States, on the southern borders of Ethiopia, to the White Nile. It is almost inconceivable that he should have been trying to do any of these things.

In the history of Indian art some areas are in very much better order than others. For those whose interests are concentrated in the Mughal period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), the study of the history of painting has been vastly advanced in the last 20 or 30 years. Every year increases the great number of paintings known to exist in public or private collections, or passing through the sale-rooms and the stocks of dealers in three continents, and almost every year there are significant discoveries and publications. In the field of Mughal architecture, perhaps, the same rapid progress is not visible. Some attractive coffee-table books figuring it have recently been published but there is a disappointing lack of analytical examination.

The Ming government's grave concern with the Mongols appears on every written page of the history of that era. Moreover, this obsession with the danger threatening from the north is reflected in a great number of place names. Towers, fortresses, garrison towns of every kind and description built and repeatedly repaired along the border, carried names referring directly or indirectly to the Mongols. Whenever a new construction was begun, it had to be given a name, and every often a name indicating a role in the defence of the country: in fact, these names call to mind such Russian place names as Vladivostok Domination of the East, and Vladikavkaz Domination of the Caucasus.