The purpose of this article is to relate a remarkable episode involving Nader Shah's navy and to connect it directly to the wider aims and projects of his regime (notably his ambitions in India), and the central events of his reign. In this way his Persian Gulf policy may emerge not as the oddity it might at first appear, but rather as a consistent element in a coherent larger whole.

The friendship and enmity between Paul Wittek and Fuad Koprulu form one of the most interesting episodes in the development of Turcology. This contribution examines the ebb and flow of that relationship as well as some of the other victims who suffered on the sidelines.

In recent years some admirable attempts have been made to offer a connected story of the development of the science of archaeology in various parts of the world in the last hundred years or so. No comparable account is available of its development in India. Archaeology developed in Denmark, in the Aegean, in Egypt and in Cranborne Chase — as it were, so many laboratories in which the methods and techniques of the new discipline were perfected. The question naturally arises in the mind as to why these methods did not grow in India, where literally hundreds of sites were at the archaeologists' disposal. What circumstances prevailed in the Indian archaeological scene to account for the remarkable delay in introducing developed concepts and techniques? To answer this question we must examine the phase when archaeology in India was dominated by Cunningham and Burgess.

The text of the Rummindēī inscription, styled at first “the Aśōka edict of Paḍariā,” appears to have been first published by Professor Bühler, in the Anzeiger for the 7th January, 1897, of the Philosophical and Historical Section of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna. A translation of it was given by M. Barth in the Journal des Savants, 1897. 73. The record was fully edited by Professor Bühler, with an excellent facsimile, in the Epigraphia Indica, 5. 1 ff.

It is only to be expected, while the ancient literature of Buddhist philosophy is inaccessible to the general critic, and still to some extent also to the Indianist, that many hasty generalizations and one-sided conclusions concerning the nature of Buddhist ideals and discipline should continue to prevail. Enough, however, has already been accomplished in the editing of texts to render some revision of what may be called common errors not altogether premature. There is, for instance, much that is misleading, or downright false, in labelling Gotama's doctrine as Pessimism, Pantheism, Atheism, Nihilism, Quietism, or Apatheia. Nor is that recent criticism altogether discriminating which finds in it the closest coincidences with that of Schopenhauer, or characterizes it bluntly as an ethic rooted in egoism, or as “the crassest eudaemonism,” and aspiring to moral stultification.

The last few years have seen the successful application to so many forms of religious belief of theories which at first sight appear to have no support in Vedic myth or ritual, that it is natural to ask whether this apparent peculiarity of Vedic religion is real or not, or whether there exist in the ritual as preserved traces of beliefs and practices which reveal a state of religious thought older than that presented to us in the main body of the ritual.

In South India Cochin is well known for its Jewish settlement, but the rich Muslim heritage of the town has so far remained almost unknown. A reason for this anonymity lies perhaps in that the Muslim community of Cochin – unlike that of Calicut – while highly influential in the commerce of the region, kept a low profile with regard to political affairs, at least from the time of the appearance of the Portuguese. Cochin, situated at 9° 58′ N and 760° 14′ E, occupies the northern part of a long stretch of land, about half a kilometre south of the Island of Vypin (Baypin or Vypeen) and 1.5 km west of the shores of the mainland, now occupied by the modern town of Ernakulam. Between Cochin and Ernakulam is a long expanse of sheltered but navigable water, at the mouth of which is Willingdon Island, housing the modern sea port and the airport.

The case set out in the first part of this article, pp. 479–96 above, will, it is hoped, make it clear that the Kaliyuga era is not of historical origin, dating from the occurrence of any actual event in b.c. 3102, and running in actual use from that time. It is nothing but an artificial reckoning —(almost as much so as is our Julian Period, beginning 1 January, b.c. 4713)—devised by the Hindū astronomers some thirty-five centuries after the initial point which they assigned to it; that is, roughly, at some time about a.d. 350–400. And it is the principal Hindū, astronomical reckoning (the other being the Śaka era begiṅning in a.d. 78); used in particular —(just as we use the Julian Period)— for the ahargaṇa or sum of days from the beginning of the reckoning down to any given time.

In China the corpse of a Buddhist priest is commonly disposed of by one of three methods, viz.: cremation, burial, or preservation by drying.

As in kannada, the earliest Tamil versions of the Mahābhārata were in the Sanskrit campū style of verse and prose. Tradition has it that one such work appeared in the early days of Tamil literature when the last of three academies or sangams flourished in the south under royal patronage at Madurai, the capital city of the Pāṇdiyan kingdom. Epigraphical support for this view is found, it is thought, in line 29 of the panegyric referred to below, where there is a reference to a translation of the Mahābhārata into Tamil and the founding of a sangam. The extract comes from the Ciṉṉamaṉūr copper plate grants, which Dr. S. Krishṇnasāmi Ayyangar thinks belong to the tenth century. Certain citations in the commentary of the learned Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar on sūtras 17 and 21 of Tolkāppiyam, iii, 2, may have come from this early Sangam Pāratam, as they have the true Sangam ring. So thinks M. Rāghava Ayyangar, who has done good work in dating Tamil literature. The verse of the Sangam Pāratam consisted, it is said, mainly of quatrains in veṇpā metre interspersed with passages of akaval, akaval being the declamatory form of verse and veṇpā the form nearer normal speech. Citations in both these forms are found in the commentary just referred to, the first said to be from “Peruntēvaṉār” (reputed author of the Sangam Pāratam) and the rest from “Pāratam”. Peruntēvanār was a name common among poets of Sangam times and the author of the Pāratam was consequently referred to as the one who composed the Pāratam to distinguish him from his namesakes. Two of his poems are included in two of the eight old anthologies of mostly fugitive verse and five of the invocatory poems are his, all eight poems being in akaval. The Sangam Pāratam is also referred to as Pāratavepāṇ, because most of its verse is said to have been in the veṇpā metre.

The first modern traveller to enter the oasis of Turfan was a German botanist in the service of Russia. Dr. A. Regel. His account of the ancient sites he had visited in 1879 appeared in Petermanns Mittheilungen, but, owing to the description of the obstacles encountered, the expedition failed to produce any practical results beyond furnishing the proof that substantial and most remarkable ruins and other remains were still existent in that distant land.

Durgā is a mighty Paurāṇic goddess; and of all the forms of Śiva's wife or Śakti she is the most popular and greatly honoured in the province of Bengal. It is in the province of Bengal only that her Pūjā (worship) is celebrated with great pomp and idol-exhibition. By ‘Pūjā’ the Anglo-Indian means now the Durgā-Pūjā festival of Bengal, during which all Government offices remain closed for one month. A new clay image of the goddess is made for the occasion, and it is enthroned on the sixth day of the light fortnight of the month Āśvina. She is worshipped during the three days next following, and is then immersed in water on the Daśamī day. These are all very widely known facts, but I mention them with a distinct purpose in view, as will be shown later on.

On a former occasion I described some of my experiences amongst the sect of the Bábís in Persia, and gave a short sketch of the history of their appearance and development. In the present paper I propose to speak of their literature and doctrine, so far as these are known to me.