This is a remarkable composition. The big elephant stands out distinctly, but not too definitely, against a subdued tropical background of interlaced branches and tangled vegetation, a monumental and majestic figure that dominates the scene.

To judge by the number of works published during the last ten years the study of Ibn Quzman should have made appreciable progress. It has marked time. If the opposite seems to have happened it is because students of the Romance languages have taken up the study which students of Arabic had dropped because of the many pit-falls in the way.

All the epigraphic material dealt with in this note was recorded in and about the oasis of Najran, situated in the Wadi of the same name at the point where it begins to leave the mountains and to splay out into the great south desert of Arabia. The oasis lies at an altitude of 4,500 feet above sea-level between rugged granite and basalt walls surmounted by a frieze of reddish, rather friable, sandstone averaging 300 feet in thickness with peaks rising out of it to a further height of about 200 feet. The highest points are about 2,000 feet above the valley or 6,500 feet above sea-level. This layer of sandstone overlies the igneous rock of the foundations over a considerable area—westward to near the summit of the main mountain range, northwards right up into Najd, and southwards far into the Yaman. It has obviously played an important part in human history by providing relatively easy trade and invasion routes through an otherwise forbidding tract of granite mountains.

There are many isolated data in the Malay Archipelago that still await scientific explanation. Dr. G. de Hevesy claimed to have discovered a kinship between the script of Easter Island and that of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (Bulletin de la Socéité préhistorique Française, 1933, Nos. 7–8; The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, E. R. Hunter, London, 1934); Sir Elliot Smith detected Egyptian influence in the banners of Alur Islands (Human History, 1930, p. 339); Dr. Paul Rivet discovered a Sumerian element in Oceanian languages (Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress, Batavia, 1930, vol. iii, pp. 519–527). And to these unsolved problems may be added the art motif of a bird perched on an animal.

When the Persians, led by Darius, had slain Gaumāta the Magian and a great number of his colleagues (. . . ἔκτεινον κου τιν μάγον εὕρισκον), they instituted an annual feast to remind the Magians of their humiliation: it was called τά μαγοϕόνια (Herodotus, iii, 79), or μαϒοϕονία (Ctesias, epit. Photii 15, § 46 ed. Gilmore). Gilmore (p. 149 n.) wisely remarked that “the agreement of Herodotus and Ctesias makes it impossible to doubt the existence of this strange custom”. Ctesias. after having stayed at the Persian court for seventeen years, could not help knowing whether or not such a feast existed, and he would never have foregone the opportunity of correcting his predecessor.

Among the sharpest contrasts between East and West has been their different approach to the problems of physical science. The West, aiming low, concentrated on the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Life, conceivably attainable ends, and arrived at modern science. The East aimed higher at the grand source of power, from which all the rest would follow, and it arrived practically nowhere. This power was sought in knowledge of the Seal of the Great Name, the seal containing the Ineffable Name of God, which was believed to have given Solomon his power over the Djinn, the birds and the winds.

Some three years ago chance brought to light in the India Office Library a little book with an English title on the cover: First catechism of Sourashtra grammar. By T. M. Rama Rou. Madras, 1905. It challenged inquiry because the script was quite unfamiliar. With it was another little book in the same script and by the same author—Saurāṣṭra-bōdhini (1906)—which fortunately gave the alphabet, in the usual order, and lists of the complex combinations of all the vowels with all the consonants, so that the script could be read. The language is listed as Paṭṅūlī, but is not described, in the Linguistic Survey of India. The author of the two books had, however, provided the necessary clue to understanding in his grammar, the opening sections of which happen to be bilingual, quoting and translating the rules of Sanskrit grammarians. For the rest, since it was usually possible to anticipate what the writer must say, for example in denning grammatical terms, and since after all the book itself gave an account of the inflectional system of the language, it remained only to arrive at the meaning of words, so far as it was not obvious from analogues in other modern Indo-Aryan languages; and (a more difficult task) to grasp the part played in the language by certain striking forms of expression which have no Indo-Aryan parallels.—To learn a modern language by methods appropriate to the interpretation of lost languages of the past is of course a procedure difficult to defend, when it would be so simple, and so much better, to learn it from the lips of the speakers in India. But the better course was not open to me, and I was not willing to postpone indefinitely an investigation which promised to be interesting from other points besides the linguistic.

It is a truism that incomplete or incorrect solutions of problems may serve a useful purpose in drawing attention to unsuspected difficulties, illuminate them, and even lead the same or subsequent workers to success; and thus I often regard my own suggestions as well as those of colleagues as mere gropings towards the light, though with no derogatory intention towards them. I was therefore very glad of Dr. Guillaume's article on “Magical Terms in the Old Testament” (JRAS., 1942, pp. 111–131), as it drew my attention to the unsatisfactory nature of the current interpretation of and some other Hebrew words; as, however, his reply shows that he has not appreciated certain of my remarks, I begin this article with a brief answer to his observations. Thereafter I similarly attempt to advance beyond or, it may be, to improve on several suggestions which Dr. Eitan makes in his “Contributions to Biblical Lexicography” (Columbia, New York, 1924) by way of illustrating my point.

The musical interlude which adorns so many a story in The Thousand Nights and One Night is one of the most interesting features of that “wondrous treasury of Muslim folk-lore”, as Burton dubbed the Alf laila wa laila. Yet, strange to say, our translators and commentators have taken little cognizance of this fact. Indeed, beyond the brief and inadequate notices contributed by Lane to his translation of the Nights, it can safely be averred that no serious attention has been devoted to the subject. It was on this account that the present study was made.

It might be thought that geography would have opened the Malay archipelago predominantly to the influence of China, but oddly enough the impact of her great civilization on the Malay world has been slight. As early as the seventh century a.d. Chinese monks sailed down to Sumatra to study the Buddhist canon, and eight centuries later the Sultans of Malacca and other Malay princes were still sending envoys to China as Malay rulers had done for hundreds of years. But China's difficult language and intricate ideographs, and her want of missionary zeal and of continuous overseas imperialism were barriers to other than trade relations. To the western half of the Malay archipelago India was nearer, and India got first into the field. With little exaggeration it has been said of Europe that it owes its theology, its literature, its science, and its art to Greece: with no greater exaggeration it may be said of the Malayan races that till the nineteenth century they owed everything to India: religions, a political system, medieval astrology and medicine, literature, arts and crafts.