The two Játakas I here lay before the public contain, as will be seen, two fables which, in the tale that forms the framework of the second book of the Pancatantra, were combined into one. Only the main features, however, are the same, the details differing greatly; and the same is the case in all the other tales which the Játakas have in common with the Pancatantra and the Hitopadeça. But, as the MSS. of these two works disagree so much that there are almost as many texts as there are MSS. (“ut pœne quot codices, tot textus esse dicere possis,” Kosegarten, p. vi), new editions of both of them, based on the oldest MSS. that can be found in India, would be of great value; and if once the oldest MS. in existence had been discovered, I should particularly recommend its publication without any alloy from other MSS., that we might be sure we have one clear, self-consistent text. I think that if this had been done, the similarity between the Singhalese (Pali) and the continental (Sanscrit) fables would appear greater; the Pancatantra being originally, as Prof. Benfey has clearly shown, a Buddhistic work. If we look at the first of the two following fables, it will be seen that the truth to be expounded is the old one, couched by Sallust (Jugurtha 10), in the words, concordia parvse res crescunt, discordia maxumse dilabuntur, or in modern form: union is strength, disunion weakness.

Travellers from the city of Peking to the town of Kalgan on the great wall of China, must make the journey by the rugged defile known as the Nankow Pass. Five miles north of the entrance, where the village of Nankow stands, is the smaller village of Keu-yung kwan. Fortifications there run up the steep slopes of the mountains on both sides of the valley; and besides arched gateways at the two ends of the village, the highway passes under a limestone archway of a much more striking appearance. This is covered with mythological and symbolic sculptures of obviously Indian origin. The tradition of the natives in the neighbourhood asserts it to have been the basement story of a pagoda which stood there; and the name by which it is still designated, Kwŏ keae t'à, “Pagoda crossing the street,” bears out the statement. We are told that this pagoda, though erected for the benefit of the locality, proved an object of such terror to the superstitious Mongols, coming south from their native wilds, that they could not be induced to pass under the ominous-looking structure; and thus it was found necessary in the early part of the Ming dynasty, to remove the upper stories of the erection; the policy of the government being to conciliate and attract these wild nomades.

1. Each year (during which Jupiter completes a twelfth part of his revolution) has to bear the name of the lunar mansion in which he rises; the years follow each other in the same order as the lunar months.

Long before I had set foot in India I had been greatly struck by the exceedingly different statements regarding its people which were made by those who knew them best. Some, and notably the missionaries, could find no language strong enough to express the utter abomination of Hindu life and custom. Every chapter of Ward's great work teems with phrases of the strongest reprobation. The ceremonies he describes are indeed vile, and it cannot be said that his condemnation is too strong. On the other hand, civil and military officers, of the highest integrity and the closest observation, have set up the Hindus as models which it would be greatly to the benefit of Europeans to follow. They saw in the Hindu village system, and the ordinary life of the villagers, a living type of patriarchal happiness, uprightness, and wisdom. Major Scott Waring may be taken as a type of such men. The discussions in Parliament upon the clauses of the great India Bill that permitted the appointment of Bishops, and opened India to mission work, are full of illustrations of this contradiction; and I can well remember when, as a boy, I waded through the reports, being struck with wonder that men who had lived side by side in India, who had gained enormous experience and possessed the ability to learn the lessons that experience should teach, could, by any possibility, arrive at conclusions so diverse. After many years spent in close intercourse with the people of India, I do not wonder now. On one occasion both views of the question were brought vividly before me. I had seen the Pongol, the touching domestic festival it is now my chief object to describe.

The various Brahmanical creeds prevailing among those Hindus who worship Vishnu and Siva have been amply illustrated by Colebrooke and other eminent scholars. When I was in England in 1836 the learned H. H. Wilson desired me to ascertain and describe the peculiarities of the Jangams or anti-brahmanical worshippers of Siva, whom he had but slightly noticed in his Essay on Sects, in the seventeenth volume of the Asiatic Researches.

The Arabs and Africans who first visited the west coast of India, came “Mu-abbar”: “from beyond” the sea. In the voyages of Ibn Batuta, translated by Dr. Lee, the country is called Muabbar, without any surmise that this is Malabar. The Syrian Christians who live in Travancore wrote the word in Syriac characters , and it has occurred to me that in careless writing this may have been altered into Malabar: a name unknown to the inhabitants; who fancy it is the European name for their country and language. The Eastern shore of India also was visited by men “from over the sea:” and the name Malabar has also been wrongly applied to the Eastern coast.

In the following remarks the term “nexus” is employed to denote a conjunction of two or more consonants in one word without the intervention of a vowel, as kt, dhy, rn, etc.

I divide the neo-Âryan languages of India into two classes. The Prâkrits and Pâli are called the “languages of the first period;” Hindî, Bengâlî, Ûriyâ, Panjâbî, Marâṭhî, Sindhî, Gujarâtî, are the “languages of the second period.”

Dr. Fergusson's book on “Tree and Serpent Worship” has opened a large field for inquiry and research. After looking through the photographs and lithographed scenes relating to the Sânchi Topes, two questions naturally suggest themselves, viz.: What was the idea which suggested the peculiar form of the Indian Tope? and, What are the scenes so carefully represented on the rails and gateways at Sanchi and Amravati ?

The Inscriptions which are the subject of the following observations were collected by General Cunningham at Mathura, in the execution of his functions as Archæological Surveyor to the Government of India, The account of his visit to Mathura is given in his report for the season 1862–3. It is not my intention to do more with these Inscriptions than to offer decipherments and translations, with a few remarks upon their character and language. General Cunningham himself will sum up the results derivable from them. His intimate knowledge of Mathura and other similar localities, his long study of Indian antiquities, and his acquaintance with the coins of the period in public collections and in his own private collection, will enable him to do this much more effectually than I could hope to accomplish.

The circumstances under which these inscriptions were discovered are detailed in my Archæological Report for 1862–3, par. 159–184.

Professor Dowson's translations were handed over to me in the end of April last, and I read them at a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on the 5th of July, just four months before the receipt of Bâbu Râjendralâl's translations, which appeared in the Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1870, p. 117–130. But the Bâbu's translations are confined to the inscriptions which I first made known to Mr. E. C. Bayley in November or December, 1860, by the copies which are now engraved in the Bengal Journal. Mr. Bayley visited Mathura early in April, 1861, and made independent copies of most of these inscriptions; and in 1863 a considerable number of the inscribed stones were forwarded to Calcutta, where Bâbu Râjendra had the opportunity of studying them at leisure. The Bâbu mentions that the inscriptions which he has translated are taken from my transcripts, “with such corrections and emendations as a careful examination of the original and comparison with Mr. Bayley's transcripts would warrant.”