It is probably in the recollection of some of the senior members of this Society how wide and deep an interest was excited in the year 1853 by the publication of Stanislas Julien's translation of the Life and Travels of Hiouen-thsang. The account given by an eye-witness of the religious, social, political, and literary state of India at the beginning of the seventh century of our era was like a rocket, carrying a rope to a whole crew of struggling scholars, on the point of being drowned in the sea of Indian chronology; and the rope was eagerly grasped by all, whether their special object was the history of Indian religion, or the history of Indian literature, architecture, or politics. While many books on Indian literature, published five-and-twenty years ago, are now put aside and forgotten, Julien's three volumes of Hiouen-thsang still maintain a fresh interest, and supply new subjects for discussion, as may be seen even in the last number of the Journal of your Society.

These Islands, from which the Portuguese were expelled by a British fleet aiding Shah Abbas in 1622 A.D., and of which the advantages were tersely put to me by a native the other day in the words, “The land is silver and the sea is pearl,” are situated generally in lat. 26° and long. 50°, the exact position of the Portuguese fort on the larger island being given as lat. 26° 13′ 53„ N., long. 50° 31′ 45„ E. They are surrounded by shoal water on every side, which greatly adds to the beauty of the place. Thus, on looking out to sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor'-wester, it would seem as if Nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint of living green in her paint box; and then, wearying of the effort, had splashed an angry streak of purple into the foreground. The water itself is so clear that you can see far down into the coral depths, while springs of fresh water bubble up through the brine, both near the entrance of the harbour and at several other places along the coast.

Having been led by Capt. Durand's discoveries at Bahrein to look into the question of the antiquities of the Persian Gulf, I have been surprised to find how much new and interesting matter relating to this region has been accumulated since Vincent and Heeren conducted their investigations into “the commerce and navigation of the ancients”; and although, therefore, I have not sufficient leisure at my command at present to work out the inquiry as it deserves to be worked out, I have still thought that the notes collected during my desultory reading might be usefully submitted to a meeting of this Society, both with a view to the partial illustration of the subject, and more especially in the hope of suggesting lines of research to other and more competent students.

My object in the following paper is to give a brief account of the wild tribes dwelling in the tract of country lying between the Brahmaputra and the Kaiendwen, Namtonai, or Ningthi, as it is indifferently called, the great western branch of the Irrawaddy.

I shall not attempt to give any description of the manners and customs of these tribes, but shall confine myself to indicating the localities which they inhabit, their probable numbers, their principal villages, and the names by which they are known among themselves and to the people of the plains; this last is very important, as many instances have occurred where inquirers working in different parts of the same country have described what is essentially one and the same tribe under different names, and the result has been that people residing at a distance have in more than one instance supposed them to be distinct tribes.

The following notes on Indian Chronology were written in 1874, and were originally intended for the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, they were printed off, I received a letter from Dr. Bühler, of Bombay, in answer to one I had written to him, on hearing a rumour that he had found Kanishka's name in one of the Puranas. I consequently refrained from publishing them, till it was known what bearing this discovery might have on the questions at issue. In order to ventilate the question, however, I had them printed, and in March, 1875, circulated them among my friends. As nothing has since been heard of Dr. Bühler's discovery, and recent excavations in Afghanistan throw new light on the question, I now submit them for republication where they were originally intended to appear.

The following article was originally suggested by a notice in Beal's “Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.” The sūtra is there selected as a type of the latest phase of Buddhist literature, not only on account of its own peculiarities, but owing to its religious importance among the Chinese, which caused the imperial rescript for its translation and general promulgation, of which an English version is there given. The two parts of which this sūtra is composed are mentioned as Nos. 15 and 16 of vol. 14 of the Tibetan “Gyut,” by Csoma Körösi in As. Res. xx. p. 529; the names of the translators fix its date as earlier than the ninth century.

Six miles beyond the first stage from Teherán, on the road to Hamadán, are the ruins of a stone caravánseráï and of two wells. The caravánseráï is called sangi ‘the stone one.’ It appears to have been one of the many caravánseráïs built in the sixth century by Anúshírván the Just. Ruins of a caravánseráï, exactly like this one, are to be seen at Ahúán, a stage beyond Semnán on the high road to Meshed, and there the legend says that it was one of Anásishírván's constructions. The distribution of the rooms and stables in these two old caravánseráïs is very different from that of the more modern ones.

In a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society in the spring of 1877, and printed in the tenth volume, new series (p. 344), of its Journal, a suggestion was made that the natural phenomenon known to Muslims of every clime as the “False Dawn” was no other than what is known in Europe by the name of “The Zodiacal Light.”

Through the liberality of the Society's rule by which a certain number of copies are furnished to the writers of papers printed in its Journal, this subject was brought to the notice of several of our most talented astronomers, in the hope that they might adopt a method of authoritatively settling the question, which is not only interesting to Orientalists as one of lexicology, but also to the astronomical world as involving a point in the archæology of their special science.