The path followed by Protestant Christianity in Meiji Japan (1868–1912) has frequently been viewed as an index to the general process of Japanese development up to World War II. The beginnings seemed promising. According to the accepted picture, the early converts included a significant number of young ex-samurai whose clan had not supported the winning side in the Meiji Restoration. The new regime dismantled the feudal order which had given their lives purpose and meaning, and they felt alienated and rejected as a result. They first came into contact with Christianity from a desire to study Western learning and thus make a new start in life; they were indifferent, or even hostile, to the Western religion itself. The early missionaries and foreign teachers who led them to Christianity in spite of such initial attitudes seem to have been, if not men with actual military experience, people of strong personality and puritanical ideals. Matching samurai stereotypes of courage and single-minded determination as they therefore did, they attracted the admiration and loyalty of their lordless pupils, who pledged themselves, through their teachers, to Christ. Conversion was often accompanied by the discovery of a new purpose in life, the task of spreading the new religion. This was a restatement of the samurai obligation to set a spiritual example to others, and also represented a patriotic mission to save the nation both morally and materially, through providing the proper basis for the adoption of Western civilization.

IF anything could make Sir Richard Burton turn in his grave, it would be to know that all the time he was having his unpleasantness with the authorities of the Bodleian, there reposed in that library an Arabic MS. containing the “Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. Ever since Professor Ethé made his catalogue of the additional Arabic MSS. in the Bodleian, the treasure was waiting to be lifted by anyone who should take the trouble to run over that catalogue in its still manuscript form. But it is plain that no student of the Arabian Nights had done so, until, in September of 1908, Professor Ethé's catalogue was most courteously put into my hands, and I discovered that the one of Galland's stories of which absolutely no Oriental trace had ever been found, and the possibility, even, of the existence of which, as an Oriental story, had been denied, had been lying in the Bodleian in Arabic since 1860. I had just returned from a vain search for MSS. of the Nights in Cairo, Syria, and Constantinople to make this find in Oxford.

THE Instructions of the Second Caliph to the Judge Abū Mūsā al-Ash'arī are edited by several Moslem writers, with the differences which seem inseparable from Oral Tradition. The earliest existing copies are those produced by Jāḥiẓ (ob. 255 a.h.: Bayān, i, 169, ed. Cairo), by Mubarrad (210–85: Kāmil, i, 9, ed. Cairo), and Ibn Ḳutaibah (213–76: 'Uyūn al-akhbār, p. 87, ed. Brockelmann); to the next century belongs that of Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (246–328: 'Iḳd Farīd, i, 33, ed. Cairo, 1293); to the same century or the next belongs the edition of Māwardī (362–450: Aḥkām Sulṭaniyyah, pp. 119–21, ed. Enger); and to a much later period that of Ibn Khaldūn (732–806: Muḳaddimah, i, 184, ed. Cairo, 1284; p. 221, ed. Beyrūt, 1900). According to Mubarrad the Instructions were very widely circulated; he has glossed a few of the expressions, but by no means provided a complete commentary. Glosses to one or two of the phrases are to be found in the Nihāyah or “Dictionary of Tradition” of Ibn al-Athīr. The document was translated into German by von Hammer (Über dic Länderverwaltung unter dem Chalifate, Berlin, 1835, pp. 206, 207) after Ibn Khaldūn; the same text was followed by de Slane in his translation of the Prolegomena (Notices et Extraits, xix, 449), and Professor Gottheil (History of the Egyptian Ḳāḍīs, p. vii). Finally the Beyrūt editor has vocalized the whole text.

In the Journal for 1879 I was permitted to insert a notice of the scholars who have contributed to the extension of our knowledge of the Languages of British India during the last thirty years; and upon the occasion of its being read at one of the Society's meetings, considerable interest was shown in the subject. I venture now to intrude upon the Society with a kindred notice upon those great scholars who have devoted their talents, and in many cases their lives, to enlarging our knowledge of the Languages of Africa.

Since writing the article in the October number of the Journal for 1910 (pp. 1283 ff.), I have been further examining some of the manuscript treasures which Dr. Stein succeeded in recovering from the immured Temple Library near Tun-huang. In that article I gave extracts from two “bilingual” texts which I discovered among those treasures, and which promised to furnish us with the key to the southern of the two unknown languages of Eastern Turkestan. In the present article I propose to report another discovery, which seems to throw light on some phonetic peculiarities of that language.

Some twenty years ago, Professor J. N. Banerjea identified a statue on the north gopura of the Naṭarāja temple at Cidambaram (Fig. I), hitherto considered to represent Agni, as Yajñapuruṣa, a minor manifestation of Viṣṇu. No other image of Yajñapuruṣa being known at the time, this was an important identification. It served, moreover, to call attention to the iconography of an extremely unusual figure as it possessed two heads (with their necks, rather than simply a pair of faces) and was directly derived, so Banerjea claimed, from a verse in the Ṛgveda.

So much has already been written on the topography of Aden by travellers who have visited the place, either from motives of curiosity, or on their way to more distant regions, also by individuals whose duties have detained them there, that I fear any information which I can add to what has already been made known, will be of little interest; however, in compliance with the request of a friend, I forward such remarks and observations as a permanent residence of six years has enabled me to collect.