In the Journal for the year 1902 a summary was given of the description of Persia and Mesopotamia found in the Nuzhat-al-Qulūb, a geographical and cosmographical work written by Ḥamd-Allah Mustawfi in 740 (1340). In the course of next year I hope to publish (in the series of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Fund) the Persian text of the geographical chapters of this work, and this will be followed by a full translation, with notes to elucidate geographical questions. Ḥamd-Allah, who is our earliest systematic geographer writing in Persian, collected his materials from the works of the earlier Arab geographers, and from various Persian monographs which had been written each to describe a single province of the Moslem Empire; and it is found that the texts of some of these monographs, thereto adding somewhat of his own knowledge, after much curtailment and a rearrangement of the order in the articles, he has transcribed almost verbatim, to form the various chapters of the Nuzhat. A good instance of this method of writing a new book is the chapter describing the provinces of Fārs and Shabānkārah, which in truth is little but a shortened transcript of the Fāre Nāmah, a work written two centuries before the time of Ḥamd-Allah, and of which the British Museum possesses an excellent MS.

In treating of the Hindú religion, much confusion has arisen from considering all the nations settled in the plains, and ranging over the mountains of Hindustan, from the Himálaya to Cape Comorin, as originally embued with one faith, and following one religious ritual.

The word śāsana means “a royal charter” and tāmra-śāsana “a royal charter engraved on a plate or plates of copper”. Revenue-free gifts, granted by ancient Indian rulers in favour of persons, deities, or religious establishments were usually endowed with a deed engraved on durable tāmra-paṭṭa, i.e. “a plate or plates of copper”. By lakṣaṇā, a tāmra-śāsana was sometimes called tāmra-paṭṭa. Often again the word indicating the deed or charter was applied, by lakṣaṇā, to indicate the land granted. But the expression tāmra-śāsana, in this modified sense of a gift of revenue-free land, was often indicated either by tāmra or by śāsana. The word śāsana in this sense is used not only in the medieval records of Orissa but even in modern Oriya. Numerous villages in Orissa still bear names ending with the word śāsana, indicating that originally they were gift villages. Besides the word tāmra-śāsana, early Orissan epigraphy knows of two other types of śāsanas. These are the deeds called kraya-śāsana and kara-śāsana.

Naghm (pi. Anghām) and Naghmah (pi. Naghamāt) mean “Vocal melody”, both being derived from the Arabic “To speak, hum, or sing in a low pleasant tone”. Such were the classical meanings of those terms, in distinction from LAḤN (pi. ALḤĀN), which stood for “melody” whether in the vocal or instrumental art. Thus, one of the earliest Arabic books on music—the Kitāb al-naghm (Book of vocal melody)—by Yūnus al-Kātib (d. c. 765), became the source book on this subject. Then came Isḥāq al-Mauṣilī (d. 791) who wrote the Kitāb al-naghm wa'l-īqā' (Book of melody and rhythm). Yet the famous Kitāb al-aghānī of Al-Iṣfahānī (d. 967) introduces each song under the title of saut, although that is only done so as to indicate the singing (taghannī) of a poem. Later, the term naghm came to be used in a modal sense, equating with the Sanscrit rāga and jātī, and the Persian āvāz. We know of the naghm in the modal sense as early as Al-Kindī (d. c. 874), one of them (called ṭarā'iq) being known as Iṣfahān. In the Mafātiḥ al-'ulūm of Abū 'Abdallāh al-Khwārizmī (d. c. 1000), these modes (dasātīn) were attributed to the famous Bārbad of the court of Khusrau Parviz the Sāsānī ruler. Al-Mas'ūdī (d. c. 957) names one of these modes as mihrbānī (cf. mihrgānī) among the ancient Persian modes, whilst Ibn Zaila (d. 1048) mentions a mode (ḍarb) called nāqūsi, which is the 26th of the Sī laḥn of Khusrau va Shīrīn of Nīzāmī of Ganja (1203).

Among the tablets acquired by the British Museum in 1884, is one of peculiar interest. It is a tablet of unbaked clay, 6⅛ in. by 7¾ in., inscribed, on both sides, with two columns of writing in the Cuneiform or wedge-character. This tablet is one of a series which must have contained, when entire, a complete chronicle of all the important events which had taken place in Babylonia, Assyria, Elam, etc., in ancient times. The text (of which a paraphrase has already been published by the present writer) begins with the reign of Nabonassar (747 B.C.), and ends with the accession of Šamas-šum-ukîn or Saosduchinos, brother of Aššur-banî-âpli (667 B.C.). The subject of this tablet was continued on others of the series, a part of one of the tablets, referring to the reign of Nabonidus and relating the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, having been acquired in 1878.

More marvellous and more remarkable than the real conquests of Alexander are the stories circulated about him, and the legends which have clustered round his name and his exploits. The history of Alexander has, from a very early period, been embellished with legends and tales. They spread from nation to nation during the whole of the ancient times, and all through the Middle Ages. Many scholars have followed up the course of this dissemination of the fabulous history of Alexander. It would, therefore, be idle repetition of work admirably done by men like Zacher, Wesselofsky, Budge, and others, should I attempt it here. All interested in the legend of Alexander are familiar with those works, where also the fullest bibliographical information is to be found. I am concerned here with what may have appeared to some of these students as the bye-paths of the legend, and which, to my mind, has not received that attention which is due to it, from more than one point of view. Hitherto the histories of Alexander were divided into two categories; the first were those writings which pretended to give a true historical description of his life and adventures, to the exclusion of fabulous matter; the other included all those fabulous histories in which the true elements were smothered under a great mass of legendary matter, the chief representative of this class being the work ascribed to a certain Callisthenes. The study of the legend centred in the study of the vicissitudes to which this work of (Pseudo-) Callisthenes had been exposed, in the course of its dissemination from the East, probably from its native country, Egypt, to the countries of the West.

The alleged influence of Christianity on the early development of Hinduism has long been a subject of investigation and controversy. Weber summed up in a masterly manner all that had been said for the one side; while with equal acumen Barth criticised and denied his conclusions. The discussion has had the effect of restricting the controversy to two points, both connected in the main with the worship of Kṛishṇa. The first relates to the Hindu doctrine of faith, or bhakti, as an essential condition of salvation, and has been dealt with by Dr. Grierson in a recent number of this Journal. The second refers to the origin of the child Kṛishṇa, his legend, and his cult, and is the subject of the present essay.

This is a preliminary account of Abu'l-Qāsim al-Bustī's refutation of Ismā'īlism with what information is available about the author as a background.

That history may be read as literature is an aesthetic judgment, which does not deflect from the essential difference between the two modes. To paraphrase Gibbon, who above all in this context knew what he was talking about, “the end of history is truth … the end of poetry is pleasure”. History, by definition, must fail to attain its ultimate goal of recreating the past “exactly as it happened”: that such is the case, whether because of the fallibility of the human intellect, or the difficulty (but not impossibility) of constructing history in a non-linear mode, or even – that stock excuse of historians – the doubtful, maybe putatively “fictional” quality of “the sources” – does not mean, as is from time to time suggested, that the attempt should not be made, or that history and fiction are indistinguishable. Intent, in this context, is all, nor should one forget that earlier proponents of fictionalised history may on occasion prove to be somewhat uncomfortable intellectual bedfellows.

If everyone—so to speak—is now reading and quoting Chorasmian, the credit most fully belongs to J. Benzing. He has with this volume made available in a readily usable form the greater part of the linguistic material known to exist for Chorasmian, a very important but hitherto largely neglected Middle Iranian language.