This article examines the linked sets of paintings commonly known as the “small Guler” Rāmāyaṇa by Paṇḍit Seu, the “Mankot” Rāmāyaṇa and the “Siege of Laṅkā” by Mānaku in the light of the text from the Vālmīki Rāmayaṇa on the versos of the paintings. This allows significant conclusions about the intentions behind their production and the original extent of each set.

Our knowledge of ornamental Kufic inscriptions is chiefly based on the materials which have been found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Upper Mesopotamia. Although they are fairly numerous, a comparative study of the origin and general development of the different types of Kufic writing is not yet possible. Such a work would have to include the countries further East, and unfortunately they have not been thoroughly explored hitherto. But the few landmarks we possess show clearly that the outlying Eastern provinces produced a greater variety of decorative inscriptions than the West ever did.

The British territories of greater Southeast Asia were administratively connected to London and Calcutta, and while local censuses show that these centres could exert some influence at the furthest peripheries of the Empire, a close analysis of the ways in which race and religion were approached in the classification of colonial subjects in Southeast Asia shows peculiarities specific to the region.

In this article I argue that the demographic and socio-political contexts of British Burma and Malaya (with references to Hong Kong) led to a framing of ‘race’ that challenged European ‘scientific’ definitions and embraced instead the interweaving of multiple aspects of an individual's identity, most prominently religion. This shift, potentially empowering as reflective of local understandings of belonging, and an improvement from the period's anthropometric framework, was to backfire, however. With the emergence of nationalism, majoritarian identities came to be homogenised in these ethno-religious intersectional communities, marginalising and excluding those who did not fit.

The Buddhist saints, that are the subject of this article, are known from a series of inscribed reliquaries collected by Alexander Cunningham and F. C. Maisey at Sanchi and neighbouring sites in central India. The inscriptions, dating to the circa early first century BC, have been known since readings of them were first published the mid-nineteenth century. The detailed re-examination of the records presented in this article shows that the reliquary inscriptions give special prominence to five Buddhist saints. The names given correspond to the five missionaries who, according to Pali sources, were sent to the Himalayan region at the time of the Third Council in the mid-third century BC. This indicates that (a) the Hemavata school was responsible for the re-vitalization of Sanchi in the post-Mauryan period and (b) that there was a well-established tradition about the nature of the Third Council in the first century BC.

In presenting another instalment of these papers, and after reading the proofs, I am reminded (without being cheered) of the quatrain of an alleged competitor in the Newdigate prize poem on “Nebuchadnezzar”:

“Nebuchadnezzar, when put out to grass,

Like stallèd oxen, or the patient ass,

Said, as he munched the unaccustomed food,

‘It may be eaten, but it is not good.’”

The territory occupied by the Kurdish race in historic times seems to have been the district called by the Greeks Kardûchia, and by both Greeks and Romans Corduene or Gordiaea, and by the Syriac writers Qardū, whence the earliest Arabic authorities derived the name Qardā, the country bounded roughly on the north by Armenia, on the west by the river Euphrates, on the south by the Arabian desert, and on the east by the ancient kingdom of Media. Strabo, the Greek geographer, states that Armenia and Atropatene consisted of prosperous districts, but that the northern part was a mountainous country occupied by wild tribes, such as the Kyrtii, nomads and brigands dispersed over the whole of Armenia and extending eastwards over the Zagros mountains. More closely he defines the land of the Gordiaei, whom the earlier writers called Kardūchi, by locating it on the banks of the Tigris and by adding that one of its chief cities was Pinaka, the modern Finik, “a very strong fortress, having three hill-tops, each fortified with its own wall, so as to form as it were a threefold city; yet Armenians subjugated it and Romans took it by storm, although the Gordiaei were apparently good builders and skilled in siege-works, for which reason Tigranes so employed them.”

The text here published occupies part of the Reverse of British Museum tablet Rm. 2,160 and includes part of two prayers, with the accompanying ritual. The first prayer is addressed to some goddess, the second is to the stone ŝadanu. Of the Obverse, only a few signs remain. My thanks are due to the Trustees of the British Museum for their kind permission to publish this text, and I have to acknowledge gratefully the help accorded to me by Professor Langdon in interpreting and restoring it, and by Mr. C. J. Gadd in collating for me some of the lines.

In the name of God the compassionate, the merciful; and may God look favourably upon our prince and prophet Mohammed the elect, the prince of those who preceded as of those who come after him, the messenger sent in victory and conquest, with glad tidings and warnings, to all the spheres of creation; may God look favourably upon him and upon his family, the just, the good, the pure, as also upon his companions, his household, his posterity, and the universality of the church who have responded to his call.

It is one of the curses of Central Asiatic linguistic research that no language of this meeting-place of nations can be studied without reference tothe history of its neighbours and predecessors, which often belong to entirely different linguistic families. It is therefore only persons of singular erudition, or, like ourselves, of that hardihood which is bred of ignorance, who venture to dogmatize on any really difficult question of Central Asiaticphonetics or lexicography.

Among the pre-Mutiny writings of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817–1898), the Indian Muslim reformer, Āsār al-ṣanādīd, a history and description of Delhi, and its principal buildings and monuments, is a most impressive achievement. From the day of its publication onwards it has repeatedly been acknowledged as an important contribution to our knowledge of the history and archaeology of Delhi. However, on the whole, and in spite of recent re-editions of the work, no due attention has been paid to the fact that as early as 1854, i.e. only seven years after the first edition, Sayyid Aḥmad Khān published a second one remarkably different in form and content. We should like, in what follows, to present some evidence that may help to explain why and how this significantly altered second edition came about. This will also contribute to a better knowledge of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān's early intellectual development.

The history of which this MS. is all that is known to exist, covered in its entirety the period between A.H. 360 and 447. This fragment—which forms the larger portion of its eighth part—commences towards the close of the year 389, and concludes early in the year 393. It is interesting, not merely as the oldest Arabic authority for the period, but more especially as affording a specimen of Oriental history written at first-hand, the facts being either within the writer's own knowledge or told him by contemporaries. A history compiled by these means is almost certain to present a picture of a period truer and more vivid than one derived from abridgments, such as the Kāmil of Ibn al-Aīr, where, all that seemed capable of omission having been discarded, little beyond the dry bones of history remains. But of histories of this type few have survived.

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.

To Sir William Jones appears to belong the honor of first since the beginning of Sanskrit studies suggesting that Pythagoras derived from India the groundwork of his philosophy. His treatment of the matter, however, is inimportant compared with that that the Colebrooke, who discussed the question of the relation of Sāṃkhya and Phyhagoreanism in some detail and with his usual masteryof material. As often, his treatment remained for many years definitive; his arguments were repeated and extended, but nothing solid was added to the foundation which he had laid until in 1884 Dr. Leopold von Schroeder published his admirable study on Pythagoras und die Inder.

This article considers two well-known texts that deal with questions of education and appropriate conduct for respectable Muslims in colonial India. The texts under scrutiny are Mirat al-Arus (The Bride's Mirror), and the Taubat-al-Nasuh (Repentance of Nasuh), completed in 1867–68 and 1873 respectively. The author was a Muslim publicist and a prolific writer who published numerous books in diverse genres. Nazir Ahmed (1830–1912) came from a family of distinguished maulavis and muftis of Bijnor (in the state of Uttar Pradesh) and Delhi. His father, a teacher in a small town near Bijnor, taught him Persian and Arabic. In 1846, Nazir Ahmad enrolled at the Delhi College and studied there till 1853. He began his career as a maulavi in Arabic, but soon (in 1856) became a deputy inspector of schools in the Department of Public Instruction. Later, after he had produced a superb translation of the Indian Penal Code in Urdu, he was nominated for the Revenue Service. He was posted as deputy collector in what was then called the North-West Provinces (i.e. modern U.P.), whence the name ‘Diptee (Deputy) Nazir Ahmad’ by which he is popularly known.

The subject of Oriental Music is one which offers a large field for research, in which very little work has, as yet, been done.

In the present article I give a translation and description of the anatomical chart kept in the Temple Medicine on the lChags-po-ri (“Iron Hill”) at Lhasa which, together with its connected monastery, forms the medical college of Tibet. The chart demonstrates the Tibetan science of anatomy, and every Tibetan doctor taught his anatomy from it.

It is well known that most of the tales which make up the Divyāvadāna collection are to be found here and there in the Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya. Cowell and Neil noted in the introduction to their editio princeps of 1886 that “although these (Tibetan) versions are often faulty and corrupt, yet without continual reference to them it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation of the Divyāvadāna”. Students of the Vinaya will probably agree that these editors, whose acquaintance with the Ḥdul ba seems to have been based upon English renderings of selected passages supplied by Léon Feer, here did less than justice to the skill and fidelity of the Tibetan translators and to the reliability of the Sanskrit manuscripts from which they worked. The extensive fragments of the Sanskrit text of the Vinaya published in the Gilgit Manuscript Series show on the whole a very close correspondence with their Tibetan counterparts, and a detailed comparison of about 200 pages of Cowell and Neil's text with the corresponding portions of the Ḥdul ba has satisfied me that where they diverge significantly the fault generally lies with the former.

Mrs. Jacob has provided us with a translation, for the first time in English, of the most important text in classical Cambodian literature, with an introduction and critical notes and lists, which will be of great help to anyone studying the Cambodian text. The Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa was composed anonymously by at least three authors over three centuries, and is divided into two parts. The earliest writer, of the sixteenth century, accounts for about a fifth of the first part, covering the main events of the Bālakāṇḍa and Ayodhyakāṇḍa. It was continued in the seventeenth century with the story up to Rāvaṇa's assembling the remnants of his army for the final battle with Rāma: but Rāvaṇa's death, the rescue of Sītā and her trial by fire, and the triumphant return to Ayodhya, are all missing. The second part of the Cambodian Rāmāyaṇa relates those events from the Uttarakāṇḍa which deal specifically with the later history of Rāma and Sītā: her second rejection and exile, the birth of their two sons, the meeting again, and Sītā's going down into the earth. This part is believed to have been composed in the eighteenth century.

The following notes, very nearly as they stand, were forwarded in July, 1861, by post to the late Colonel Baird Smith, for communication to the Eoyal Asiatic Society. The address got defaced in the mail-bags; and the parcel, after lying for several months in the Dead Letter Office, found its way back to Eoorkee. My observations have thus forfeited the advantage of correction and criticism from one so experienced in the subject to which they relate. Meanwhile, I have had some hurried opportunities of seeing and hearing more, and can thus make some alterations and additions.— H. B. M.