Three years ago, in his Schweich Lectures on “The Early Poetry of Israel in its Physical and Social Origins”, Dr. George Adam Smith gave us a detailed examination of all the remains of ancient Hebrew poetry contained in the Old Testament which he thought might reasonably be assigned to the period before the eighth century b.c., that notable century which saw the rise of the great Prophets—Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah—who brought to the religion of Israel a new spirit, and set it upon the road of development which has been fraught with incalculable consequences to the history of mankind. Those who heard his lectures, or have read them in their since published form, will remember that in dealing with these ancient relics of literature Dr. Smith throughout examined them with an eye to the compositions of those cousins of Israel, the nomad tribes of Arabia. Comparing the two, at every step he found that the latter threw light on the former, and brought into strong relief the close kinship of these two great historic branches of the Semitic race. “Ancient Israel illustrated by Ancient Arabia” might, in fact, be taken as the alternative description of his lectures, the beauty and eloquence of which those who heard them are not likely soon to forget.

Much has been done by scholars to elucidate the history of the earliest times in India, based principally on the Veda and the brahmanical literature, and the deductions of philology. Kṣatriya tradition, especially in the genealogical accounts, contains a great quantity of quasi-historical matter, but has been generally discarded as meriting little or no trust. It is, however, worthy of attention and examination, since it tells us what the ancient Aryans knew or believed about the earliest ‘events’ in India.

It is passing strange that this ancient and interesting author, whose exposition of the Mīmāṃsā sūtras is the oldest now extant, should be so much neglected by modern students of Sanskrit. Yet one would suppose that a writer who offered an interpretation of Vedic ritual, and who preceded Sāyaṇa by nearly twelve centuries, would never fail to receive attention from students of the most ancient literature of India. But there are others to whom a good knowledge of Mīmāṃsā is of importance. It is no exaggeration to say that, without that knowledge, it would be impossible rightly to comprehend the larger treatises on Vedānta—notably those of the very learned Appaya Dīkṣita, in which very lengthy disquisitions on Mīmāṃsā topics abound — or even Jayanta Bhaṭṭa's Nyāyamanjarī.

The temple and dam which form the subject of this paper have already been dealt with in the Indian Antiquary and in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the former paper, written by Colonel Kincaid, being the most complete.

The Vākāṭaka Dynasty, of which the very name and existence had been utterly forgotten for many centuries, was brought to the knowledge of students of ancient Indian history by the publication in 1836 of a copper-plate grant from the Central Provinces. Since that date a few more inscriptions on stone or copper have been discovered at various times and places, and the little known about the dynasty is derived solely from those records. No extant coin can be assigned to the Vākāṭaka princes, who must have used as currency the monetary issues of other powers. We are ignorant of the derivation of the name Vākāṭaka, and are unable to say whether the kings were indigenous or of foreign descent. Nor do we know for certain the locality in which the dynasty took its rise. It is not mentioned in literature, although it seems to be the subject of an obscure allusion in the Purāṇas, which contain in the section dealing with the dynasties of Vidiśā, etc., the passage translated by Mr. Pargiter from his eclectic text, as follows:—

“Hear also the future kings of Vidiśā. Bhogin, son of the Naga king Seṣa, will be king, conqueror of his enemies' cities, a king who will exalt the Nāga family. Saducandra, and Candrāṁśa who will be a second Nakhavant, then Dhanadharman, and Vaṅgara is remembered as the fourth. Then Bhūtinanda will reign in the Vaidiśa kingdom.

About twelve years ago Dr. Hoernle published a series of ancient documents written in Brāhmī characters and an Iranian language. There was and is some uncertainty about the exact spot or spots where they were found. Some of them had been bought “from a Khotan trader Badruddīn, who could or would give no information”. Others were said to have been dug out from a buried town near Kuchar. The interpretation of these documents has not advanced much since they were edited, though we now know that they are written in the same tongue which is used in numerous fragments and MSS. found in Eastern Turkistan, and which has been variously designated North Aryan, East Iranian, Tokharī, and Khotanese. The alphabet in which these documents are written, on the other hand, is much better known now than twelve years ago. Dr. Hoernle has published tables found in Central Asia and containing complete alphabets, so that we are now relatively well informed about the value of the different signs. Moreover, a comparison with other manuscript finds from Turkistan has shown that some signs were not from the beginning correctly transliterated. In the present connexion it is of importance that we now know that two different signs were originally confounded and invariably transliterated ñ. One of them, however, denotes an r-sound, and is now usually transcribed rr.

The present article was originally intended to be a supplement to Dr. Venkatasubbiah's dissertation on the Kalas, presented to the philosophical faculty of the University of Berne in 1910 and printed at Madras in 1911. Considering, however, the possibility that a certain number of European Sanskritists may not be acquainted with this dissertation, we believe it necessary to repeat here the most important points which have been discussed there, hoping that in this form the article may be understood by all scholars interested in these matters.–E. M.

In a paper at p. 79 above, it is sought to show that the name of the race to which Kanishka and his connections belonged was Kusa or Kusha; not Kushan or Kushān, as is believed at present. I would invite closer attention to some of the evidence, which hardly seems to bear out such a view: other parts of it are being dealt with by Mr. Allan.

In these notes I propose to deal as compendiously as possible with a number of points in the Edicts to which even after the publications of Kern, Senart, and Bühler more or less obscurity still attaches, or upon which additional light may be thrown by the aid of subsequent discoveries, such as that of the Arthaśāstra by Kauṭalya. However anxious we may be to avoid the fault of punarukti, it will be impossible in some cases not to recur to passages which have already been frequently discussed.