Yāska's Nirukta (ca. fifth-third century bce), the seminal text of the Sanskritic discipline of nirvacana or ‘etymology’, is one of the most important yet least studied late Vedic texts. Particularly little attention has been paid to Nirukta Chapter 7. This chapter outlines Yāska's views on Vedic deities and articulates the hermeneutic principles whereby they are classified and defined. It plays a crucial, yet underappreciated, role in the history of ancient India's theological and hermeneutical speculations. The absence of an accessible English translation, which tackles the text's many conceptual and linguistic complexities, is the main reason why Nirukta Chapter 7 has not received the attention it deserves. We offer the first complete annotated English translation in a century. A comprehensive introduction clarifies the structure and rationale of Chapter 7 and elucidates the salient features of Yāska's theology.

The subject of the Sanskrit poem called the Mahábhárata is well known to be the struggle for supremacy between two kindred and rival families, those of Pándu and Kuru. The event is in all probability historically true, and the circumstances related in the poem, however blended with fiction and coloured by mythology, are in many instances likely to be substantially authentic. It is, however, Jn the episodical portions with which the poem abounds, that information of a curious and no doubt, in the main, correct description, relating to the social and political state of India, at periods considerably anterior to the Christian æra, is to be found. The information, it is true, is of a mixed character, as might be expected in a professedly poetical composition, and in a work which has very possibly been from time to time corrupted by comparatively modern interpolation. Still there is much that wears the semblance of accuracy and antiquity, as in the instances which I propose to bring to the observation of the Society.

The personages described by the term Shahbandar, with such variations in orthography as Savendar, Sabinder, Xabendar, and the like, appear so frequently in the literature of the Eastern seas that it is desirable to arrive at a definite idea of the position which they occupied, and the functions which they discharged. The task is not, however, easy, for the ordinary Persian and Portuguese dictionaries are not very enlightening on this particular topic, while the discussion of the term in Hobson-Jobson is by no means exhaustive.

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.

Within the last decade of years, the museums of France and England have been enriched by numerous monuments of Assyrian art, that clearly show the soil from which they were obtained was peopled by a race who, to its warlike habits, added many of the refinements of civilized life. The researches of Botta and Layard—so far as lapidary tablets are capable of conveying the economy of a nation—hare familiarised us in some measure with the public rites and ceremonies of the Assyrians, as well as given an insight into their more domestic concerns; and the pens of these travellers have further elucidated the subject in a manner of which the praise of the public is guarantee to the ability displayed, while the monuments themselves, as patents of their energy, remain in the capitals of Europe, until, in the course of time, they share in the fate of their Assyrian predecessors. Profoundly indifferent, however, to such an event, our savans are in the mean time labouring to unravel the mystic characters engraved on the records so lately revealed to ua; and such is the progress made, that we may shortly expect to be as cognizant of the deeds of the “stouthearted king and the glory of his high looks,” as we are conversant with the celebrities of Greece or Rome. The only desideratum wanting, it appears, to complete the picture of Assyria, is a faithful sketch of her aspect in desolation, when she is “empty, and void, and waste; when flocks lie down in the midst of her; and when her rivers are opened, and her palace is dissolved.” This we have endeavoured to supply in the three maps of the vestiges of Assyria, made from actual survey of the spot. Topography, however, is a dry subject, and we enter upon it with diffidence and reluctance.

As late as 1920 it was believed that civilization on the Indian subcontinent dated back only to the time of Alexander's invasion in the 4th century b.c. and that everything before that was “dark”. This assumption was made in spite of the fact that literary evidence pointed to the contrary. However, in 1921 the “belief” received its first blow when Daya Ram Sahni discovered the site of Harappa; the second one came just a year later when R. D. Banerji discovered Mohenjo-daro. Subsequent excavations at these two sites and at another site called Chanhu-daro, respectively by M. S. Vats, John Marshall, and E. J. H. Mackay, brought to light fuller details of the civilization which encompassed the Indus valley in the 3rd millennium b.c. The more recent work at Amri, Damb Sadaat, Gumla, Jalilpur, Kalibangan, Kot Diji, Lothal, Sarai Khola, and Surkotda has added new dimensions to our knowledge of this civilization.

In the July, 1895, number of this Journal I gave a description of the kingdom of Bengala (Bengal) from the pen of a Muhammadan Chinaman named Mahuan, who on account of his knowledge of Arabic was attached as Interpreter to the suite of Chêng Ho, when he made his voyages to India and other places in the Eastern seas at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

That the religious ideas of any epoch tend to flow in the channels dug by the philosophy then prevailing is a commonplace, and it is not surprising, therefore, that in the period between the composition of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad and that of the SK. the various religions which are described in more or less detail in the Upaniṣads and the MBh. are for the most part strongly impregnated with Sāṁkhya doctrines. Not that they accepted the Sāṁkhya scheme wholesale; they accept only so much as is necessary for their purposes and have no hesitation in making modifications or discordant additions of their own. Nevertheless we can discern through the confused welter of systems that the general outlines of the scheme set out by Īśvarakṛṣṇa with its summing up of existence under twenty-five heads were accepted as the standard throughout the period. But how disturbing it would be to all our convictions of historical development if, as has been held, not merely was the outer façade of the Sāṁkhya philosophy maintained intact for all that time, but also there was no change inside. In a lapse of many centuries, during which philosophical speculation was so active and new schools with new ideas and methods were developing, we should expect some change in nomenclature and a great deal of change in the conceptions underlying the apparently unchanging scheme; but there is no general agreement yet about the nature and extent of such changes, if any. Partly, the quality of the evidence is to blame; for we have no exposition of Sāṁkhya teaching which is both certainly authoritative and certainly older than the SK., so that a way is always left open to the retort, when a view other than that contained in the SK.

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

These drawings were first brought to notice by the late Mr. Archibald Carlleyle and myself, and were discovered by us independently of each other in 1880, he working in Rewah and Mirzāpur and I in Banda. I took up the subject from the anthropological and zoological side entirely, Mr. Carlleyle from the antiquarian or philological side. He evidently had made some important discoveries of ancient records, but, as he desired to work them himself, he imparted no information on either the nature or the localities of his discoveries, and his knowledge has died with him. The first scientific paper on the drawings was by myself published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1883, and was entitled “On the recent existence of Rhinoceros Indicus in the North-West Provinces, and a description of an archaic rock painting from Mirzapur, representing the hunting of this animal” (Journ., lii, part 2, 1883, pp. 56 to 64, with two plates). This article excited much interest in Europe, and great things were expected from the discovery. I regret that I have no copy of the paper. A short paragraph is also devoted to the subject in the Gazetteer of Mirzāpur. There is a further paper in the Proc. Asiatic Society, Bengal, for 1884, on the durability of haematite drawings on sandstone rocks, by myself also. Shortly afterwards Mr. A. M. Markham, C.S., noticed a few words written in this pigment in ancient characters at Chachaie Koond, or the Falls of the Tons in Rewah.

One of the papyri of the second century A.D. which Drs. Grenfell and Hunt lately discovered at Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, contains several passages in a barbarian language, which is presumably an Indian dialect. This may be concluded from the facts that that text—a farce—is concerned with a Greek lady named Charition, who has been stranded on the coast of a country bordering the Indian Ocean, and that the king of that country addresses his retinue by the words Ἰνδ⋯ν πρ⋯μοι, ‘ chiefs of the Indians.’ In other places the same king and his countrymen use their own language.

The tribes of Upper Burma and Eastern Assam known as Kachins have, both before and after the annexation of Northern Burma, attracted a great deal of attention from ethnologists and philologists. A considerable literature has accumulated on the subject since the time Colonel Hannay, in 1846, and Dr. Anderson, in 1868, gave us the first reliable information regarding these savage and warlike hill tribes. At present they occupy a large and fertile territory extending almost from 29° North latitude to 20° 30′. They number probably about half a million, of which one hundred thousand occupy independent territory, the larger part being under British or Chinese rule.

Among the Khotanese manuscripts from Tun-huang now in the Pelliot Collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, a fragment of a legend of Kaniṣka has been found. I transliterated these manuscripts during December, 1938, and January, 1939. In the roll numbered P 2787 there are 194 lines of Khotanese text. Lines 1–153 treat eloquently of the character and activities of the king of Khotan, called in line 50 śī kū śrrī vījītta sagrrāma and in line 82 śai-kū miḍā jasta śrrī vīśa' <sa> grrāma 'the noble lord, gracious god, Śrī Viśa' Sangrāma'. A second text in lines 154–194 contains the fragmentary legend of Kaṇaiska. and Aśagauṣa his kalyāṇamitra. The first three lines are written in the now familiar Gostanian Sanskrit, the Sanskrit of Khotan. These lines are then translated, with some variants, into Khotanese in which language the text continues.

Although my visit this year to Abu Shahrein has been unproductive of any very important results, yet the description of the ruins will, I hope, prove sufficiently interesting, to render the transcription of the rough notes I made upon the spot, not altogether superfluous.

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 well-known Śāradā character of Kaśmīr is described by Bühler p. 56 of his Indische Palaeographie. He points out that it is descended from the western variety of the Gupta type of alphabets, and notes that a modern variety of it is the so-called Ṭakkarī of Jammū and the neighbourhood. Bühler does not, so far as I am aware, mention any other of the modern alphabets of north-western India.