The dialect here under consideration was first given attention by Hodgson, and was later briefly described from Hodgson's materials by Professor Sten Konow in the Linguistic Survey of India. No connected specimen in the language has so far been made available.

The following story and notes, therefore, gathered in the Darjeeling District in 1931 will perhaps serve as a supplement to our knowledge of this imperfectly known form of speech.

This poem is contained along with certain other stotras in one of the Nepalese MSS. presented by the late B. H. Hodgson to the Library of the India Office (I.O., 2921). A second copy is included in the collection of the Bengal Asiatic Society, and its initial verses are quoted by Rājendra Lāla Mitra in his account of the MS. A third copy is among the works presented to Burnouf, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The Royal Asiatic Society has recently been a beneficiary from the estate of Mrs Dorothy Wales, widow of H. G. Quaritch Wales, the erudite scholar of early Southeast Asian history who died in 1981. The occasion of this bequest, the contents of which are discussed in the Librarian's report herein (pp. 169–70), prompts this note on the contribution of Quaritch Wales to Southeast Asian studies.

Quaritch Wales was born in 1900 and educated at Charterhouse and Queens' College, Cambridge. He immediately embarked on a career in Southeast Asia, from which he was never to be deflected. At the age of 23 he entered the service of the Siamese Government where he served from 1924 to 1928 as an adviser to the courts of King Rama VI and King Rama VII. The first-hand knowledge gained from this experience formed the basis of his pioneering study Siamese State Ceremonies (1931), which remains a work of unrivalled insight into the Brahmanical rituals and Buddhist accretions of Thai kingship. He followed this with another work based on his experiences of Thai court and state functions, Ancient Siamese Government and Administration (1934).

Of the ten incarnations of Viṣṇu which he is believed in classical Hinduism to have undergone for the welfare of the human beings on earth, the sixth is that of Paraśurāma, a Brahmanic hero whose characteristic feature was the axe (paraśu) with which he is reported to have slain innumerable Kṣatriya warriors in 21 combats. We may perhaps recall here the most important events of the legend as it occurs in the Mahābhārata (III.116, XII.49.27–60, cf. also XIII.153) and in the Purāṇas: Harivaṃśa (I.33), Vāyu (Adhy.94), Matsya (Adhy.43), Viṣṇu (IV.11.9–20), Bhāgavata (IX.15, 16), Mārkaṇḍeya (Adhy.17), Brahmāḍḍa (III.26–47, very extensive!), and Viṣṇudharmottara (I.Adhy.25–7 ff.):

There are very few popular beliefs of any duration, however extravagant or incredible, that cannot be traced to some foundation in truth, however much distorted by ignorance, superstition or folly; and we have a remarkable instance of this in the celebrated Upas, or Poison Tree of Java, whose shade was believed to extinguish life in the unhappy beings who sought refuge under it. It was stated to be in a valley in the interior of Java, but it was surrounded with so many terrors, that its exact locality was not likely to be well defined or understood; and in this uncertainty originated the fables which have so long been before the public. I am indebted to Sir Charles Forbes, for a copy of a letter addressed to the late W. Taylor Money, Esq., Consul-General at Venice, from a gentleman who visited the Guwo-Upas, or Poisoned Valley, near Batur, in Java, on the 4th of July, 1830. I understand that the letter has appeared in print, but I have not seen it; and I deem it necessary to incorporate it in the present paper, to facilitate the comparisons and deductions I purpose making. A perusal of it will, I presume, afford satisfactory reasons to conclude, that in this deadly spot originated the belief in the Poison Tree, the mistake of the mephitic vapour escaping from vegetation, rather than from the soil, being natural and probable. The writer of the letter is a gentleman of the name of Loudon, an Englishman, but a landholder in Java, well known to Doctor Horsfield, and full reliance may be placed on the accuracy of his descriptions. He is disposed to question the resemblance between this Valley of Death and the Grotto del Cane, near to Naples; but I will endeavour to show that the difference is only in the physical features of the localities, and that the probability is, that the effects described originate in precisely similar causes. Dr. Horsfield informs me that he was at Batur in 1815 and 1816, and aware of the vicinity of the poisonous valley, but the natives refused to conduct him to it.

The earliest Malay literature extant belongs to a time five hundred years ago, when in spite of having embraced Islam the Malay still cared enough for the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to translate them into a vernacular already full of Arabic loanwords. In addition he borrowed from India folk romances tricked out with motifs and descriptive passages from the two great Hindu epics. For example, in one such romance, the Hikayat Parang Puting, when the fairy lover “burning as if he would set fairyland on fire” is rejected by his mistress, he tosses sleepless until “the cocks crow, the birds of paradise sing in the sky, the parrots chatter in the angsoka trees, parroquets on the boughs of the nagasari and mynahs on the chempaka trees, and a drizzle of rain makes all the flowers bloom”. The Indian genius, like our own, will readily sentimentalize landscape to accord with human moods. But turn to the Malay version of a scene in the garden at Hastinapura that “astonished the moon by its beauty”:—“about midnight was seen a portent of the city's imminent doom. It was utterly still and the moon looked like a lovely woman peeping from behind a door. Gentle rain fell and a light breeze stirred in the distance. There were banks of clouds of all shapes and the birds were restless, flying here and there like a man with two wives.” So far as I know that last simile is a gloss by the observant, cynical Malay. In modern jargon, the Indian is an introvert, the Malay an extravert.

The present narrative was composed, a few months ago, at Tangier, under my direction. It was written by the Taleb Sidi Ibrahim ben Muhammed, of the town of Messa, in the province of Sús. It was first written in the Berber language, and thence translated into Arabic, from which I made an English version.

The object of this essay is not so much to propound a new theory of my own, as to draw more prominent attention to one put forth by Mr. Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar in two papers contributed by him to the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1903. They are entitled Gūrjaras and Epigraphic Notes and Questions, No. III. Stated quite briefly, the theory is that the well-known ‘ Kings of Mahodaya ’ were Gūrjaras. Mr. Bhandarkar does not claim the whole credit of it for himself. Much of his material, as he himself admits, has been drawn by him from the Bombay Gazetteer. But he has added to it new material and fresh points of view, and worked up the whole into a consistent theory. To me it appears that, in the main, the theory is sound, and throws unexpected light on a period of Indian history until now very dark. I will first briefly explain the main positions of the theory, as I gather them from the two papers above referred to: the evidence, in detail, must be read in the papers themselves. Next, I shall set out, in detail, such further particulars as a closer examination of the contemporary records of that period appears to me to yield, partly in corroboration, partly in modification of Mr. Bhandarkar's theory.

Among the treasures brought to light by Dr. Stein in his excavations in Chinese Turkestan and lodged by him last summer in the British Museum, not the least interesting was a collection of fragmentary Tibetan manuscripts. These were found in the ruins of a Buddhist shrine buried in a site beyond the Endere stream, at the extreme eastern limit of the region explored, under circumstances which have already been detailed in Dr. Stein's “Preliminary Report,” pp. 55—56. It suffices here to say that the conditions under which the fragments were discovered were such as to make it practically impossible to date them later than the eighth century; and the evidence of a Chinese sgraffito in the same building has since proved this conclusion to be right. Hence they came to us as the earliest known relics of Tibetan literature.

The gilšu is found in both sexes and on both sides of the body. It is followed in the text series by qinnātu (GU.DU.MEŠ) “the buttocks”. This specific anatomical term appears to refer quite clearly to the upper part of the lower limb. Further evidence may be provided by the description of carrying children straddling the hip region, a form of transporting infants which is still widely practised among the more primitive peoples of Africa and Asia at the present time. As it is an obvious landmark, easily recognizable on the surface of the body; it may perhaps be the palpable mass formed by the protrusion of the greater trochanter of the femur. However, this is still open to question.

In the discussion lately held as to how far Sanskrit was a spoken language, I drew attention to the points of resemblance which existed between the so-called ‘Dard’ languages and the language employed by Aśōka in the Shāhbāzgaṛhī inscription. During the past few months I have been examining all these languages with considerable minuteness, and hope to publish the results of my studies after a reasonable period. In the meantime I have been pressed to give further details regarding the connection between ‘Dard’ and Shāhbāzgaṛhī. I therefore submit the following list of phonetic parallels. I have taken the Shb. examples entirely from M. Senart's analysis of the Kapur di Giri inscription in the Indian Antiquary, vol. xxi (1892), pp. 8 ff. As for the ‘Dard’ examples, I intend them to be taken as preliminary to my more extended account which I hope to publish at a future date. I must therefore ask leave to make a few explanatory statements in anticipation. Miklosich and Pischel have shown reasons for assuming that these ‘Dard’ languages are modern representatives of the old Paiśācī Prākrit described by Hēma-candra. My researches have amply corroborated this suggestion, and I now call these languages, not ‘Dard’ (which is an unsuitable name), but ‘Modern Paiśācī.’ It will be noticed that I sometimes refer derivations to the Avesta, and sometimes to Sanskrit.

The new Has Shamra text published by Virolleaud is, despite better preservation, considerably more difficult to interpret than its two immediate predecessors, and in this regard resembles rather the fragments of 1929.

The only Pai. quotation connected directly with the Bṛh. is given by Mārkaṇḍeya (seventeenth century): Bṛhatkathāyām kupaci pisāḷam (Grierson, EPG., 134). Keith, HSL., p. 269, observes, “We really cannot be sure that we have a single relic of the Bṝhatkathā, still less that so late a grammarian as Mārkaṇḍeya actually had the text before him.” Pisālaṃ, moreover, is a neo-Indian form, which normally would not occur before the twelfth century, for the words in AMg pisalla (PG 595) and in Pkt. pisalla (Hem., i, 193) are normal Mid-Indian as contrasted with Mar. pisāḷeṇ “madness”.

M. Stanislas Julien, the worthy successor of the lamented Abel Remusát, has commenced his career as professor of Chinese literature by publishing translations of some of the popular tales that best illustrate the habits of thought and action which prevail in the celestial empire. As ours is not exactly a critical journal, we shall not offer any opinion on the merits of these works; but in pursuance of our plan of diffusing information on oriental subjects, we shall offer to our readers such abstracts and specimens of the several tales as may serve to illustrate the character of the Chinese school of fiction, and, consequently, the state of the Chinese mind—for popular tales may justly be regarded as the personification of popular principles, Want of space rather than inclination prevents us from examining, at the same time, the professor's specimens of the Chinese drama; but as he proposes soon to translate some additional plays, we shall have another opportunity of directing attention to the subject. We shall at present confine ourselves to the romances, and we shall preserve the French orthography of proper names, as we are about to give only the outlines, not the translations of the tales.

[The Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection published at Calcutta by Professor Wilson, in the year 1828, being with difficulty procurable in England, it has been thought that the following account of that Collection might not be unacceptable to those persons who feel an interest in the subjects which it was intended to illustrate, and who may not be aware of its nature and extent.