When the Island of Bombay was included as an item in the dowry of the Portuguese Princess Catherine on her marriage to King Charles II, Lord Clarendon, who as Lord High Chancellor had a principal share in the negotiation for the marriage, is alleged to have referred to “the Island of Bombay with the towns and castles thereon, which are within a little distance from Brazil”. This assertion may fit in with the belief that has been sometimes expressed that Great Britain acquired her Empire in a fit of absence of mind. It can, however, have no foundation in fact. There was a great deal of give and take in the Contract for the marriage. Portugal received a body of English troops to protect her from the attacks of the Dutch; England relinquished any claim upon Ceylon, an undertaking faithfully observed, though it did not prevent the Dutch from ousting the Portuguese from that Island. For this assistance England received an adequate return. Portugal resigned her claim to Tangier, and gave up her holding in Bombay. The value of the harbour of Bombay had already been recognized by the Directors of the East India Company in London, and by its factors at Surat. It is absurd to suppose that Clarendon was not fully informed of the situation and the value of this important item in the bargain. Apart from any other source of information he had before him the letter discussed below from an impartial observer.

The variety of yamakas in the OJR is roughly restricted to seven main types. The number of yamaka-stanzas is very considerable, about 240. Their distribution over the whole poem seems to be rather unequal, but this lack of balance can be ascribed to the presence of three extended episodes. (1) Sarga XVI.1–14 describes the building of the damconnection (setubandha) between the continent of India and the island of Lĕṅkā, between Mount Mahendra and Mount Suwela; the rest of the sarga (15–47) counts some twenty yamaka-stanzas devoted to a description of the loveliness of Mount Suwela. (2) The description of The Paradise on Earth in Restored Lĕṅkā, XXIV.97–123, consists nearly exclusively of yamakas. (3) The Aerial Flight from Lĕṅkā, to Ayodhyā by Heavenly Chariot Puṣpaka (XXIV.253–XXVI.9) consists of nearly nothing else. Once these passages are lifted from the Table, yamakas appear to be scattered more or less equally over a majority of sargas; we find the yamaka-form often continued in some consecutive stanzas.

The Karma-pa sect, an important offshoot of the bKa'-rgyud-pa, derives from dPal Chos-gyi-grags-pa, generally known as Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, who was born in A.D. 1110 at Dre-śod in East Tibet. He was, by some accounts, the first Lama to originate a continuous line of reincarnations lasting to the present day—a claim which is contested by the Lamas of 'Bri-khuṅ. At the age of 30 Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa became the principal disciple of sGam-po-pa, himself the chief disciple of rJe-btsun Mid-la (Mi-la-ras-pa), and so entered the direct doctrinal succession from Mar-pa, the founder of the bKa'-rgyud-pa sect. A pious explanation of the name Karma-pa is that an assembly of gods (lha) and Dakini bestowed on Dus-gsummkhyen-pa, in his sixteenth year, knowledge of the past, present, and future—together with a magical black mitre woven from the hair of a million mKha'-'gro-ma (angels or fairies). That story is found in vol Pa of the Chos-'byuṅ of dPa'-bo gTsug-lag; but however early the name Karma-pa came into existence its perpetuation was probably due to the association of Dus-gsum-mkhyen-pa with the monastery of Karma gDan-sa, or Lho Karma'i sGar, which he founded in 1147 to the east of the Nom-chu, somewhere between Ri-bo-che and sDe-dge. A few years before his death in 1193 he returned to Central Tibet and in 1189 he founded mTshur-phu in the sTod-lun valley some 50 miles west of Lhasa.

The modern city of Ch'üan-Chou, in the Province of Fukien, China, and Situated Near to Amoy on the Formosa Strait, was from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries the chief port for the ocean-going trade between China and the West, particularly during the Sung (A.D. 960–1280) and the Yüan (A.D. 1280–1368) dynasties. An extensive and lucrative trade was carried on with Java, Sumatra, India, and the Persian Gulf. Through Arabic, Persian, and Syriac speaking intermediaries precious products of China found their way on to the European markets. In the thirteenth century the city of Zaitún, as it was known in the West, excited the admiration and wonder of the Polos, the early Franciscan missionaries, and Muslim travellers by the size and wealth of its commercial undertakings. With the fall of the Mongol (Yüan) dynasty about the middle of the fourteenth century the city fell on evil times from which it never fully recovered, for though some considerable trade was carried on during the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, Ch'üan-chou as an international port declined, and its great rival, Canton, grew from the time that Portuguese traders were allowed to establish themselves at Macao.

The Twelver Shi'a says that the imam Ja'far al-Sadiq disinherited his son Isma'il for drunkenness and gave the succession to another, Musa al-Kazim. Others argued that once an imam always an imam and continued to recognize Isma'il. Prof. Bernard Lewis has pointed out that there are hints at something worse than drunkenness, perhaps heresy. Sunni writers represent the Isma'ilis as godless with seven stages of initiation leading up to a repudiation of all religion but this is due to a misunderstanding and to the belief that every secret doctrine must be evil. Till recently, the Isma'ilis kept their books hidden from the profane and this secrecy still persists but some of their books have now been published though the texts are usually corrupt and need the oral tradition of interpretation to explain them fully.