In this Journal, 1906. 912, line 13 f., for “Pāvakā (sic), and Vēṭhadīpa, and caused,” etc., read “Pāvakā (sic), Vēthadīpa, and Kusinārā, and caused,” etc.

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

In a recent paper Dr. Bloch has made a valuable contribution to knowledge by publishing an edition and translation of the inscription on the colossal statue found at Sāheṭ-Māheṭ by Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1862–63. When Dr. Bloch published this paper he had not read my essay entitled “Kauśāmbī and Śrāvastī.” I have since sent him a copy of my paper, but he still adheres to the view expressed in his. I may therefore deal with Dr. Bloch's statement of opinion as if he had expressly considered my views and had rejected them. I propose in the following pages to defend my position.

This paper analyses the use of religious folklore among the Meitei people of Manipur in northeastern India in the creation of a racial identity. After the Meiteis, who are ethnically Southeast Asian, were forced to convert to Hinduism in the early eighteenth century by the Manipuri king Garibniwaz, they were provided with a number of folklores regarding their origin that combined Hindu and indigenous Meitei deities and myths. Recently, the rise of anti-Hindu sentiment in Manipur—spurred by a movement to revive the indigenous Meitei religion and a strained political relationship with India—has led to the questioning of the validity of these stories by Meitei academics. As a result a new cannon of literature is being developed by scholars that link the origin of the community to its Southeast Asian roots. Discovering the racial identity of the Meitei people has motived this movement. This paper analyzes the multiple meanings that mythologies concerning origin hold in contemporary Meitei society and challenges the modern notion that historical consciousness is absolute truth.

The dating of the so-called Oracle of Hystaspes or its Vorlage has for long been a major problem among scholars. This article attempts to articulate some issues present in the Oracle and similar or identical ones known to have been used in Mthridates’ VI Eupator propaganda. This can help not only dating the Oracle itself but also solve dating problems in Persian apocalyptic texts, whose dating may be pushed backwards.

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.

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.

The Khalkha River (Khalkhin Gol), which forms part of the north-east frontier between the Mongolian People–s Republic (MPR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC), is famous in Mongolian history for the 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan), in which joint Mongolian-Soviet forces finally repulsed the attempted invasion of the MPR by the Japanese Army of Manchukuo. Less well known, however, is the existence on the left bank of that river of one of Mongolia's most interesting religious antiquities, the remains of a gigantic Buddhist statue, known as the Great Buddha (Ikh Burkhan).

Sandwich glass is the product of a technique practised from antiquity. Essentially, decoration is achieved by laying gold to a glass surface, patterning this gold in various ways, and then adding a second layer of glass to encapsulate the gold pattern. The technique seems to have been employed only rarely by craftsmen in Islamic areas; certainly surviving examples are rare.