In 1896 A. Querry published in the Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris (vol. ix, pp. 110–24), a short note on the dialect spoken in Nain. His materials were collected by some of his Persian friends at Tehran where they chanced to meet a Naini on his visit to the capital. Since that time nothing has appeared in the press to add to our information concerning the linguistics in that corner of Persia.

The copy of a new trilingual inscription of Darius on page 434 is taken from a photograph of a thin sheet of gold now in the possession of Mr. T. C. Zorab of Hamadan, who has very kindly given me permission to publish it. The tablet measures about 9 inches square, and seems to be of the same type as the foundation inscriptions on metal tablets of Warad Sin of Larsa, of Simat-Inninni, the wife of Rim-Sin, king of Larsa, of Tukulti-Ninurta I, and of Sargon II, though there is nothing in the inscription to prove that the gold tablet was actually a foundation deposit. Restorations of the text have been made from a silver tablet, a photograph of which I have been able to use owing to the kindness of Dr. Campbell Thompson.

Historians are agreed as to the importance of the fiscal institutions established in Upper India by Sher Shah (1540–1545), but their precise nature is not easy to discover. The difficulty lies mainly in the authorities available. All the published chronicles of the Afghan kingdom derive in effect from the Tārīkh-i Sher Shāhī of Abbās Sarwānī, and the text of this writer has not yet been worked out from the discordant manuscripts which have survived, so that it is not possible to be certain what the chronicler actually wrote in the few and tantalising passages which he devoted to the fiscal system. The only detailed study of the subject which I have seen is contained in Professor Kalikaranjan Qanungo's monograph entitled Sher Shah, which was published in Calcutta in 1921. In what follows I shall have to question some of the Professor's conclusions regarding the fiscal system established by his hero, and it is only fair to begin by saying that my criticisms do not apply to more than a very small proportion of his work. He has not, indeed, faced the problems presented by the text of the Tārīkh, and consequently his study cannot be regarded as definitive, but in the questions of chronology, topography, and psychology which occupy most of his pages he seems to me to have exercised a generally sound judgment along with great industry, and there are not many of his conclusions from which I would dissent.

It would have been better that the explanation following should have formed an introduction to the series of papers under this heading, rather than a belated interjection at or near their end. But at any rate circumstances require that the explanation should not be further delayed.