The poet now offers reverence to the forty-two Harivallabhas, who were specially dear to the Lord In the text I have numbered these for convenience of reference.

THE Instructions of the Second Caliph to the Judge Abū Mūsā al-Ash'arī are edited by several Moslem writers, with the differences which seem inseparable from Oral Tradition. The earliest existing copies are those produced by Jāḥiẓ (ob. 255 a.h.: Bayān, i, 169, ed. Cairo), by Mubarrad (210–85: Kāmil, i, 9, ed. Cairo), and Ibn Ḳutaibah (213–76: 'Uyūn al-akhbār, p. 87, ed. Brockelmann); to the next century belongs that of Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (246–328: 'Iḳd Farīd, i, 33, ed. Cairo, 1293); to the same century or the next belongs the edition of Māwardī (362–450: Aḥkām Sulṭaniyyah, pp. 119–21, ed. Enger); and to a much later period that of Ibn Khaldūn (732–806: Muḳaddimah, i, 184, ed. Cairo, 1284; p. 221, ed. Beyrūt, 1900). According to Mubarrad the Instructions were very widely circulated; he has glossed a few of the expressions, but by no means provided a complete commentary. Glosses to one or two of the phrases are to be found in the Nihāyah or “Dictionary of Tradition” of Ibn al-Athīr. The document was translated into German by von Hammer (Über dic Länderverwaltung unter dem Chalifate, Berlin, 1835, pp. 206, 207) after Ibn Khaldūn; the same text was followed by de Slane in his translation of the Prolegomena (Notices et Extraits, xix, 449), and Professor Gottheil (History of the Egyptian Ḳāḍīs, p. vii). Finally the Beyrūt editor has vocalized the whole text.

IF anything could make Sir Richard Burton turn in his grave, it would be to know that all the time he was having his unpleasantness with the authorities of the Bodleian, there reposed in that library an Arabic MS. containing the “Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. Ever since Professor Ethé made his catalogue of the additional Arabic MSS. in the Bodleian, the treasure was waiting to be lifted by anyone who should take the trouble to run over that catalogue in its still manuscript form. But it is plain that no student of the Arabian Nights had done so, until, in September of 1908, Professor Ethé's catalogue was most courteously put into my hands, and I discovered that the one of Galland's stories of which absolutely no Oriental trace had ever been found, and the possibility, even, of the existence of which, as an Oriental story, had been denied, had been lying in the Bodleian in Arabic since 1860. I had just returned from a vain search for MSS. of the Nights in Cairo, Syria, and Constantinople to make this find in Oxford.

THE British Museum having been fortunate enough to acquire a new historical document from Assyria of considerable importance, it has been thought that (not withstanding that an excellent translation and commentary upon it, from the pen of the copyist of the text, Mr. L. W. King, of the British Museum, has been published) a few notes concerning it would not be without interest to the readers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and more particularly those whose studies deal with the pre-Christian Semitic East, especially the tract lying north-west of the Persian Gulf.

WHILE preparing an article on Buddhist Councils for Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, I came to identify the so-called “Five Points” of Mahādeva with some “heretical” tenets of the Kathāvatthu. If I am right in this identification, and I believe I am, the fact cannot be without importance, for it establishes a link, hitherto wanting, between the Cingalese tradition of the Third Council and the Northern traditions concerning councils and the origin of the Mahāsāṃghikas. I do not intend to draw the conclusions that can be derived therefrom, namely, as concerns the redaction of the Kathāvatthu: this book, one of the richest of Buddhist antiquity, has not yet been studied enough, and its interpretation is beset with many difficulties. Careful comparison with “Northern” documents on sects would prove very useful, and, to say the truth, much help will be derived from the forthcoming translation of the Kathāvatthu itself.

THE Dipavaṁsa tells us (8. 1, 2) that:—“The far-seeing Moggaliputta, having by supernatural vision beheld the establishment of the [Buddhist] doctrine in the future in the border-land, sent out the Thēras Majjhantika and others, each with four (companions), to establish the doctrine in the border-land for the enlightenment of sentient beings.” And it tells us in verse 5 that the Thēra Mahādēva was thus sent to the Mahisa country, Mahisaraṭṭha, = Mahisharāshṭra. The Mahāvaṁsa, in its account of the same matter, calls this territory (12. 3, 29) Mahisamaṇḍala, = Mahishamaṇḍala. Buddhaghōsha, dealing with the missions in his Samanta-Pāsādikā, quotes a verse, very similar to that of the Dīpavaṁsa, which mentions it as raṭṭhaṁ Mahisaṁ, but uses in his own prose the forms Mahisakamaṇḍala and Mahiṁsaka°; in the latter case, with the insertion of a nasal in a manner which is not uncommon in Pāli. And this last form is also found in the Jātaka and its commentary. We adopt the form Mahishamaṇḍala, because it is the one which, in its Pāli shape, has been habitually used by other writers.