Most collections of Japanese wood-block printed books contain some items that were once in the possession of the circulating libraries known as kashihonya and the library of the School is no exception. Kashihonya were certainly in existence by the Genroku period (1688–1704), for the collection Haikai sugatanazo, which was published in 1703, includes the verse, Karihon no kakidashi ga kuru toshizakai ‘The year's end—when the bills come in for books borrowed’. Thenceforward they thrived on the growing literate population and in the Tokugawa period they reached their peak during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is from this time that almost all the former kashihonya books in the School date. The books contain the usual range of seals and admonitory labels attesting to their use by kashihonya, but I list only those with sufficient information to be of interest.

When revolution broke out in China in 1911 and rapidly led to the overthrow of the dynasty and the founding of a republic, opinion throughout the world was startled and deeply impressed. The European press expressed amazement that a quaint Oriental people such as the Chinese should take it into their heads to carry out an anti-monarchical revolution, and that hard-headed political realist Vladimir Ilich Lenin waxed positively lyrical about the Chinese revolution and its leader. ‘The East’, he wrote, ‘has committed itself to the Western path,…further hundreds and hundreds of millions of people will from now on join in the struggle for the ideals for which the West has striven’. In Sun Yat-sen, he saw ‘a revolutionary democrat, imbued with that nobility and heroism peculiar to a rising rather than a declining class’. Even when Sun had been supplanted as President by Yüan Shih-k'ai, Lenin still saw a ‘mighty democratic movement’ in progress throughout Asia, whereby hundreds of millions of people were ‘awakening into life, light, and freedom’. Succeeding generations of scholars and political observers, instructed by the spectacle of corruption, division, and military domination which unfolded itself in various guises throughout the era from 1911 to 1949, have gone almost completely to the opposite extreme. What happened in 1911 was not a revolution at all, or only in the most superficial sense; the monarchical system was indeed overthrown, but there was no real change in the locus of power in society.

The first publication of an inscription in the alphabet by a European scholar was made about 120 years ago by H. C. von der Gabelentz in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (Halle), n, 1, 1839. Books and articles relating to the subject have been appearing intermittently ever since, but finality has not yet been reached on the exact shape and phonetic value of some letters in the alphabet.

In 1963 I was given leave by the School to make a preliminary study of Bachama, a language spoken in the east of Northern Nigeria, and in parts ofthe adjacent territory of the Cameroons Republic. In general the topics onwhich people were most willing to talk freely to me, and to record, were storiesabout the folk-lore and their history. Besides being good language material, some of these accounts may be of interest to historians and others working inthe Nigerian field. The text given below is from a tape recording made at Lamurde on 3 May of that year, by Nikodimu Sondo Bukumdi, a local manof some 50 years or more. Lamurde, or Bácámá as the Bachama call it, is thenormal home of the chief of the tribe, and is one of their most important cultural centres. It is here that a new chief is elected, and given instruction in his duties. It is here that many of the objects connected with the religious festival of Nzeanzo at Farei are kept during the rest of the year. Recently, the chiefhas found it more convenient for his administrative duties to live at Numan, and he is now seldom at Lamurde. In his absence on the occasion of my visit, the head of the town assembled a number of elders in the open air who sataround and talked together of the remembered history of their people.

Wāman Pandit was born in the second half of the seventeenth century (the definite date is not obtainable) at the village of Kumthe in the Satārā, district of the Bombay Presidency. According to the latest research work of the Bharata Itīhāsa Samśodhak Mandali of Poona, Wāman was a native of Bijāpore. In his early days he received some training in Sanskrit from his father, who was the village-astrologer by profession, and who had considerable knowledge of Sanskrit. When about 18 he went to Benāres, the centre of Hindu learning and also the most sacred place of the Hindus. He was accompanied by his wife, an incident which shows that his parents were dead at that time. He applied himself rigorously to the study of Sanskrit for not less than twelve years, and having completed his education, in all departments of knowledge, he returned to his native place.

The early literature of the Hindi group of languages, that is the literature written in Avadhī, Bihārī, Rājputānī, and Hindi proper, was largely poetical, and prose was rare. In the beginning of the nineteenth century Lallū Jī Lāi and Sadal Miśr entered Dr. Gilchrist's service and at his suggestion translated some early works into modern vernaculars. The works selected were chiefly Sanskrit, and they were translated into Braj or Khaṛī Bolī. Lallū Jī is the better known of the two, but he was not a pioneer, nor was his example followed. For nearly fifty years after he wrote, nothing of real merit was produced in Khaṛī. The practical founder of modern Hindi prose, the man who gave it its impetus and started it on its career of prosperity, was Hariś Chandar. A somewhat exaggerated emphasis has been placed on Lallū's and Sadal Miśr's translations, and this has resulted in a lack of perspective. Lallū has been acclaimed as the “Father of Hindi prose”. The title is inaccurate, and has been made the subject of protest. One Hindi writer, in complaining of his being called the “Creator of Khaṛī Bolī”, maintains that such an idea is entirely erroneous, and remarks that before his books were brought out Sadā Sukh Lāi and Inẖā Allāh were writing in straightforward Hindi. He adds, in an amusing aside, that they wrote on their own initiative and not at the behest of another. He also criticizes Lallu's style as being too much tainted with Braj idioms and poetical turns of expression. Sadal Miśr he regards as Lallu's superior.

In 1925 P. Pelliot drew a very interesting comparison between the Mongol and the Tungus names for the four cardinal points. This comparison was followed by S. M. ShirokogorofFs detailed study of the Northern Tungus terms of orientation, to which W. Kotwicz added a short note on the Mongol terms. Later in 1928 the latter scholar touched on the same subject in nis article entitled “Sur les modes d'orientation en Asie Centrale”, in which the Turkish names for the four cardinal points are discussed. These noteworthy studies show clearly how in the above-mentioned languages the four cardinal points are expressed by various words signifying “right” and “left” and “front” and “back”, as well as “upward” and “downward”.

It is well known what an extraordinary power of absorbing foreign words Persian possesses. In addition to the innumerable Arabic words which since the creation of the New Persian literary language have formed an integral part of Persian speech, we have a fair number of Aramaic words 1 on the one hand, and of Eastern Iranian words on the other; in later times, there is also considerable borrowing from Turkish. It is, I think, proper to regard Eastern Iranian words in Persian as “loan-words” in the same way as, say, Arabic or Aramaic words; for no Eastern Iranian language is amongst the constituent dialects of Modern Persian, which can perhaps best be defined as the descendant of the current language of culture and commerce which developed in Persia during the Sasanian era. So far, little attention has been paid to the Eastern Iranian words in Persian. Horn, in his excellent paper on the New Persian literary language, quoted examples such as Balaχšān, Hilmand, fiš “mane”, fay, fuy “idol”, malaχ “locust”, bilist “span”, lōγḻdan “to milk”, etc., words whose phonetic habitus does not agree with the normal Persian development. To-day we are in a much more fortunate position since the Sogdian language has gradually become known to us: seen from Persia, Sogdian was by far the most important Eastern Iranian language, a language of culture, literature, and commerce, whose territory bordered on the area of Persian speech and extended towards the frontiers of China.

In the preface to my recently published book, Zurvän, A Zoroastrian Dilemma,1 I said: ‘I have not found it necessary to alter much in the proof stage only what seemed to me to be positive mistakes’. During the two and a half years that the book was in the Press, however, I had come across evidence which I had not noticed before and which seems to be worth considering. There is further evidence of the theory put forward in the book that the original Zandiks persecuted by Kartir were identical with the Dahris. On the other hand, the references to Mithraism in the book are largely out of date, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to correct them.

The Siddhasāra of Ravigupta, son of Durgagupta, is known in three main versions, the original Sanskrit, the Tibetan, and the Khotanese. Each is important for certain reasons. The Sanskrit text is important mainly because of its date. Although the extant MSS are late—they have been assigned to A.D. 1374 and 1443 respectively —the original must be earlier than A.D. 1000, after which date we have no Khotanese. It is likely to be considerably earlier, but we have no evidence at present to enable us to fix the date with precision. If the Jinamitra who, with Ādityavarman and Candra, translated the Tibetan version is the same as the Jinamitra who took part in the compilation of the Mahāvyutpatti in the first quarter of the ninth century, the date of the composition of the Sanskrit text must precede A.D. 800. The occasional line is identical with one in Suśruta or in Caraka, but in a land of floating traditions this may not amount to much. In the colophon, preserved imperfectly in one of the two Sanskrit MSS and given in full in Tibetan, Ravigupta acknowledges only two sources by name: Dhanvantari and Ātreya, the two sages who are usually held to have been involved in the transmission of medical knowledge from on high. This too is unhelpful.