The average quality of the sculpture at the Exhibition of the Art of India and Pakistan at the Royal Academy, London, is remarkably high. Naturally there is a bigger percentage of first-class pieces in bronze than in stone, because so much of the best stone sculpture is fixed in temples or carved on rock. The great Siva could not be moved from Elephanta nor a River Goddess from Ellora nor the Descent of the Ganges from the rock-face at Mamallapuram.

Indian influence upon European literature goes back to the earliest times. The learned German scholar, Dr. Gerland, traces to Indian sources a number of the episodes in the Odyssey; the story of Circe, for instance, appears also in Somadeva's Kathā Sarit Sāgara, where a Yakshinī, or female demon, changes men into beasts by playing to them on her magic flute. The Sirens are the Indian Rākshasīs, and the Cyclops are Rākshasas. India is the home of fables, especially of beast and fairy stories, and these found their way to the West by a variety of channels. Some were carried by traders, others by wandering tribes like the gypsies, whose Indian origin is now generally accepted. Others again reached the West by way of Baghdad and Alexandria. Thus the story of the Judgment of Solomon occurs also in the Mahoshadha Jātaka, where it is attributed to the Buddha in one of his previous incarnations; doubtless it found its way from India to Palestine along with the ivory, apes, and peacocks which Hiram, King of Tyre, brought from Ophir to Jerusalem by way of Ezion Geber. If we identify Ophir with Sopara on the west coast of India, near Bombay, this becomes still more probable, for Sopara or Śurpāraka was a well-known port in Buddhist times, and the capital of Aparānta, mentioned by Aśoka in his list of Buddhist countries.

Recently at the village of Noh in Bharatpur Tensil on the Bharatpur-Chiksana (or Agra) road I discoveŕed the two colossal figures here illustrated. The Yaksha with a lateral topknot on his head is of the same type and stone as one from Parkham village, now in the Curzon Museum at Muttra. It also has an inscription like that on the feet of the Parkham Yaksha. Its height above the ground is 5 feet and its girth round the upper arms 7 feet.

The Burmese chronicles are emphatic that it was from the Mon city of Thaton that King Anuruddha in a.d. 1057 obtained the Pāli canon. Yet students of Burmese history have been by no means insensitive to the difficulty of reconciling this with the exclusively Hindu character of the more or less contemporary archæological remains at Thaton. The late Prince Damrong even went so far as to suggest that P'rӑ Paṭhóm, in the neighbouring Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravatī, rather than Thaton in Burma, must have been the city that Anuruddha conquered, and from which he derived his Hīnayāna Buddhism. I now propose shortly to reconsider the archæological evidence, in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the mechanics of Indian cultural expansion and of a certain passage in one of the Mon chronicles to which attention has not hitherto been directed in this particular connection. I believe that this may help us to resolve the difficulty.

In the sixth, century a.d. Chinese and Persian merchants used to meet regularly in Ceylon for the exchange of their products: this is clear from Cosmas Indicopleustes, xi, 336, and Procopius, Persian Wars, i, 20, 9–13. In addition to this the existence of direct sea-commerce between the Sassanid Empire and China has often been asserted as an established fact, e.g. by J. T. Reinaud, Relations des voyages faits far les Arabes, etc. (Paris, 1845), p. xxxv; H. Yule, Marco Polo (London, 1903), p. 83; L. Caetani, Annali dell'Islam (Milan, 1905–1926), ii, 2, 12 A.H., sect. 133, note 1; iii, 16 A.H., sect. 328; E. H. Warmington, The commerce between the Roman Empire and India (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 138, 358, note 146; and others. But this assertion rests on slender evidence and requires discussion. I shall endeavour to set down all the passages which might be adduced and to assess the value of each one.

A Description of several social grades of the Sinhalese occur in the rite called the Ūrā Yakkama (Shooting of the Boar) contained in the Kohombā-kankāriya. Its context is as follows: The chief performer enacts the killing of the boar and the sharing of its flesh among the various craftsmen. From the remarks made about each recipient and the treatment which the representative of each trade receives, one sees what value was attached to the work of each from the point of view of the dancer. The function of each in the social order is also mentioned. Below is given the text of this part of the ceremony as it has been gathered, from oral tradition from different districts in Ceylon. As may be expected, many variant versions exist, but only a few have been noticed here.

The three Buddhist sects, peculiar to Ceylon, are agreed upon all fundamental points of doctrine. The differences between them are confined to points of practice and of outward observance.

As has been seen the Siam Sect was founded after the arrival at Kandy in a.d. 1753 of a delegation of monks sent from Siam at the request of King Kīrti Srī to renew the validity of monastic orders, which had come to lapse in Ceylon in the course of frequent wars and internal disturbances. The following quotation is taken from Donald Obeyesekere's Outline of Ceylon History (Colombo, 1911):—

“In 1750 the Emperor (i.e. King Kīrti Srī), with the assistance of the Dutch, dispatched an embassy with presents and a letter to King Dammika of Siam, requesting the latter to send some learned priests for the purpose of advancing Buddhism in Lankā (Ceylon). Accordingly there arrived in Lanka a learned high priest, named Upali, with over ten other, priests, bringing with them books of Dharma and the Vinaya, such as were not to be found in Ceylon. They were received with great ceremony and honour by the Emperor, and ere long the rite of ordination was conferred, amid great rejoicing, on the principal sāmaneras (novices) of Ceylon. The Siamese priests were given the Malwatta Vihīra to reside in. Another chapter of priests, together with the high priests Mahā. Visuddhācariya and Varananamuni, were sent over to Ceylon during this reign by the King of Siam, and hundreds of Sinhalese underwent the upasampadā ordination.”

M. Louis Renou, in his critical text of Ptolemy Bk. VII (Paris: Champion, 1925), gives the first name in ch. 1, s. 83, as Nαγαγοúρα (Nagagoura), with -γ-(-g-) as the third consonant. This is the reading of the MS. Vatic. 191 (X), which M. Renou and other authorities find superior to its competitors. The majority of the other MSS. utilized by M. Renou give the name as Nαϒαρονραρίςc (Nagarouraris), with -ρ- (-τ-) as the third consonant and an added final syllable which looks as if it had crept in from the margin or was some other kind of a corruption: this reading was followed by earlier editions such as that of Nobbe. The choice between -g- and -r- as the third consonant is thus a choice between “the best and the rest”, always embarrassing for a critical editor. One is, in such a case, fully entitled to prefer “the best”, as M. Renou has done. Moreover, it is only fair to mention two extraneous considerations, which could be argued as supporting -g-. First, there is another case where X reads -g- and the rest read -r-, and X is unquestionably right: this is in ch. 1, s. 50, Ȇragassa X, Ȇrarassa al., modern Eraj, ancient Erakaccha. Secondly, the termination -goura might claim some a priori probability if one considers the article by Przyluski in Bull. Soc. Ling., xxvii, p. 218 (not xx as wrongly given in footnote in JRAS., 1929, p. 273); but this point has very little weight, for as Przyluski shows and anyone can quickly see, the consonant which precedes the terminatio -oura in Ptolemy is very variable.

In this commentary there are variations from the version by Abū Bishr and additions to it. Margoliouth says that the commentary is based on the version by Abū Bishr and suggests that Avicenna had a copy which had been annotated by one who had had access to the Syriac translation. If this should prove to be correct it will still not explain all the additions. That Avicenna uses for Úποκρîτης and not the of Abū Bishr may be due to the Syriac, but al-Fārābī before him had used tragodia and komodia instead of the (panegyric) and (invective) of Abū Bishr. Other changes may be explained by Avicenna's ability to get out of the faithful but obscure Arabic rendering more than the ordinary reader; as when he prefers to for γλττα (1457 b 1) and to for εύΧ (1456 b 11).

This defiant little inscription of three words has held its secret through twenty centuries. On the Bone relics of the Honan Find it is not uncommon, but in the inscribed Bronzes, even the oldest, it is not met. Brief and perhaps paltry as it may seem, it has not failed to engage the attention of Chinese spécialists without any very convincing conclusion. But on one point Chinese critics do concur. These small three-word entries are no part of the main scription of the oracular sentence. They stand isolated in place, and have no syntactic connection with the latter. Perhaps they were archivests' memoranda, or, as I suggest, the craftsman's directions to his finisher. They have none of the importance of the sentences, and their only interest now is that they have proved inscrutable. I, too, have joined in the quest and have, indeed, excogitated a conclusion acceptable to other students!

This article is an attempt, in the nature of things tentative only, to carry a stage further the identification and location of the principal Sino-European works printed in China during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as recorded by Henri Cordier in his L'Imprimerie Sino-Européene en Chine (Paris, 1901) and by Paul Pelliot in T'oung Pao (vol. xxiii, pp. 356–360) (Leiden, 1924). Considerations of space have obliged me to confine myself to a discussion of some ten of the most interesting of these, that is those which have the whole or the greatest part of the text printed in a European language. I therefore omit all those which have thetitle-page in Latin and the text in Chinese characters.

I Have before me a cartoon by that talented Turkish caricaturist, Cemal Nadir, whose untimely death took place early this year. It represents a school mistress pointing to a blackboard on which is chalked a “plus” sign (+). She asks a child what the sign is called. The child replies: “Well, three years ago it was called cem, two years ago it was zait, last year it was toplama; I really don't know what they are calling it now.”