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.

For the right understanding of Alexander's Indian campaign it is essential to place correctly the nations called Malloi, Kathaioi, and Oxydrakai by Arrian, who were among the most formidable opponents of the invader. Mr. McCrindle, in his valuable work, “The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great” (new ed., 1896), seems to me to have gone wrong in this matter, and to have seriously misplaced all three nations. He has located the Malloi about one degree of latitude too far south, and, with respect to the Oxydrakai, his error, in my judgment, amounts to about three degrees. He has also failed to indicate correctly the position of the Kathaioi. I propose in this paper to examine all the evidence on the subject, and to try to establish the true approximate positions of the three nations on the map of ancient India.

This poem is contained along with certain other stotras in one of the Nepalese MSS. presented by the late B. H. Hodgson to the Library of the India Office (I.O., 2921). A second copy is included in the collection of the Bengal Asiatic Society, and its initial verses are quoted by Rājendra Lāla Mitra in his account of the MS. A third copy is among the works presented to Burnouf, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

In 1705 there appeared at Paris a work entitled “Histoire générale de l'empire mogol depuis sa fondation, sur les Mémoires portugais de M. Manouchi, Venitien” (4to, pp. 272, also in 12mo, 2 vols.), by Father Fran¸is Catrou, of the Company of Jésus. The narrative breaks off at the end of the war of succession between Aurangzeb and his brothers (1658–9). In 1715 the same writer supplemented the above work by bringing out what he calls a Third Part (4to, pp. 107), inwhich he continues the story to the year 1707 and the battle near Agrah between two sons of Aurangzeb. Besides the Hague editions in 1708 of the French text of 1705, English translations of it appeared in 1708, 1722 (second edition), and 1826 (a new translation); and an Italian version was published at Venice in 1731. Neither in English nor Italian is there any edition of the continuation published by Catrou in 1715.

The early Persian document written in Hebrew characters which Professor D. S. Margoliouth has at my request kindly undertaken to publish, and of which his present ṗaper is intended to furnish a preliminary account, was obtained by me in the course of my journey of archaeological exploration in Chinese Turkestan carried out during 1900–1, under the orders of the Government of India.

This document is described by Dr. Hoernlé in a Report on the British Collection of Antiquities from Central Asia, reprinted from the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. lxx, pt. i, extra No. 1, p. 27. On the discovery of these documents Dr. Hoernlé's Note on the British Collection of Central Asian Antiquities, Oxford, 1899, should be consulted. The Persian leaf is now in the British Museum. There is with it another of about the same period, but almost illegible. They formed crumbled up lumps of waste paper, and required very careful unfolding and smoothing out.

In the issue of this Journal for July, 1903 (pp. 467–493), Professor D. S. Margoliouth propounds a theory in explanation of the words Muslim and Ḥanīf, used in the Ḳur'ān, which is thus stated:—

“The suggestion, then, which I should offer for the explanation of these terms is that some twenty years before Mohammed's mission some sort of natural monotheism was preached by Musaylimah, whose followers being called Muslims [after the preacher's name] and Ḥanīfs [from the tribe of Ḥanīfah to which he belonged], these words were supposed to signify monotheist, and as such were adopted by Mohammed, who, owing to the comparative obscurity of Musaylimah, had at least at first no knowledge of their origin, and afterwards felt bound to assert positively that they were both in use in Abraham's time.”

The Tanjur contains, beside the Meghadūta, two short poems attributed to Kālidāsa, both mentioned by Huth in his analysis of Mdo, vols. cxvii–cxxiv (Sitziungsberichte d. k. preuss. Akademie d. Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1895, xv, p. 17). One is entitled Maṅgalāṣṭaka, and is found in Rgyud, vol. lxxxvi, fol. 225. The other, a hymn to Sarasvatī (Rgyud, vol. lxxxii, foll. 199–200), I here transcribe with a tentative translation, which may perhaps enable scholars to estimate the probability of the supposed authorship, and to identify the work with the Sanskrit original if discovered. None of the numerous printed collections of Sanskrit stotras appear to contain anything corresponding to it, nor is it identical with any of the manuscript stotras to Sarasvatī which I have been able to examine. Perhaps some scholar may be able to discover verses cited from it.

In speaking of Miṣr, it is in the first place necessary to define exactly what it is meant to include, as the name has been used at different periods with different meanings. Miṣr here denotes the southern half of the Arab capital of Egypt, as opposed to the northern one. For its application to this part of Cairo we have the authority of El Maqrîzî, but it must be borne in mind that this author does not always adhere to his own definition, and frequently uses Miṣr in a limited sense also. In order to avoid confusion the town to which the name Miṣr in this restricted sense is given will here be distinguished as Fusṭâṭ.