In the Ultra-Indian peninsula different layers of nationalities may be distinguished, being successive arrivalsfrom different quarters. In most cases it is difficult to determine with exactitude the time of their respective settlements; but, as a general rule, the later conquerors have driven the former possessors of the soil into the hills, appropriating to themselves the more fertile lands on the banks of the rivers; and it may be readily assumed that the inhabitants we now find in the valleys of the Menam and Irawaddi are the most recent immigrants. History shows this to be the case. Whenever, in the course of events, the empires stretching along the great rivers became weakened by luxury or broken up by internal dissensions, the rude and warlike tribes of the surrounding mountains, watchful of the growing weakness of their former masters, and the decay of their defences, have burst from their forests and made slaves of the populations of the towns. This phenomenon, not unknown in other parts of the world, has been frequently repeated in the histories of Assam and Burmah, of Siam and of Kambodia; and it is by keeping before our eyes these continual revolutions that we may collect the disjecta membra of arts and sciences from the different quarters to which they have been scattered, and arrange them under one comprehensive aspect, where each of them occupies its natural position.

Hsü Shên in his postface to the Shuo wên gives a list of eight styles of script practised in the Ch'in period. The fourth of these is called ch'ung shu and a note is added by Hsü Ch'ieh one of the editors of the revised text which was published in a.d. 986 at the emperor's command. He remarks that the term is equivalent to niao shu “bird script”, so called because the tops of the characters represent bird forms. There is, however, tangible evidence that this fanciful variety of writing was in vogue earlier than the Ch'in period.

The following narrative is abridged from a Japanese book called “Nankai Kibun” (Notes of the Southern Ocean), which records the examination by the officials of Ohikuzen in Kiushiu, of a native of that province, named Magotarō, who had been cast away on an island near Mindanao, and, after a captivity of seven years, was ultimately brought back to Japan in a Dutch ship.

Gwáder is a seaport on the coast of Makrán (ancient Gedrosia), and Makran the name of the southernmost portion of the country marked Baluchistán in our maps. The derivation of the word “Makrán” is doubtful; indeed, I have never heard a satisfactory derivation. Baluchistán, viz. the country of the Baluchis, is so called from the people by whom it is now principally inhabited, who, themselves, claim to be of Arab extraction (Arabs of the Koreish tribe), stating that they were forced to emigrate, about the latter end of the seventh century, from the neighbourhood of Aleppo, in Syria, by the tyranny of the Khalif Yezid, in consequence of their having taken the part of Husain (the martyr), grandson of Muhammad; and that, passing through Persia, they eventually reached Makrán, which they gradually overran and became masters of. Their traditions are, however, meagre and unsatisfactory. They do not appear to have preserved the name of a single place through which they passed in their journey through Persia; nor have they any recollection of the people inhabiting Makran at the time of their advent. This state of oblivion may, perhaps, be accounted for by the gradual manner of their coming into the country, viz. clan by clan at a time; but, in the lists of their ancestors, as I have received them, many names must have been omitted.

In the Middle Ages the learned, who expected to control public behaviour and belief, tried to give their theories the force of law. Theology was the peak of the system, and canon law, though autonomous, naturally developed in parallel, and without conflict. True and false data about Islam were set in the framework of Catholic theology, and Islam, and the history of the Prophet as well, were defined in European terms unrecognizable by Arabs. The theology of Crusade was the theology of European relations with Islam; theology and history alike were little more than supporting propaganda for aggression, while canon law defined the limits within which the war was supposed to take place.

PROFESSOR Nikolsky has been kind enough to send me a photographand copy of a new and important Vannic inscription which he has published, with translation and commentary, in the Reports of the Imperial (Russian) Archaeological Commission, 37. The inscription was found at Armavir. Its importance for the study of Vannic philology, as well as the fact that I believe I can improve upon Professor Nikolsky's translation, induces me to reproduce it here. In continuance of my previous notation its number will be XCI.

The main interest of the world's history centres so indisputably in the doings of the Aryan and Semitic races, that even those whose attention has been chiefly devoted to other areas of human development cannot but concur in the judgment which assigns to the object of their studies a secondary place. At the same time, the second place, and even the third, has a claim to some hearing; and if we grant (as we are bound to do) the second place to China as the intellectual, and to some extent the political leader of Eastern Asia, the third place will perhaps be allowed to belong to Japan. Pending the settlement of the disputed Accadian question, Japanese literature takes us back many centuries further than the oldest documents of the Mongols, Mantchus, Turks, Finns, or any other nation of the Altaic stock; and, as the Archaic Japanese language may, on account of its superior antiquity, lay claim to the title of the Sanskrit of the Altaic tongues, so, also, is it to be presumed that the early Japanese civilization and religion present us with the most original features of Altaic thought and life.

From the Rājatarangmī we learn that, when Kāsyapa raised Kāshmir above the waters, Nīla, whose royal canopy was the hood of the serpent, reigned there over the Nāgas.

The average quality of the sculpture at the Exhibition of the Art of India and Pakistan at the Royal Academy, London, is remarkably high. Naturally there is a bigger percentage of first-class pieces in bronze than in stone, because so much of the best stone sculpture is fixed in temples or carved on rock. The great Siva could not be moved from Elephanta nor a River Goddess from Ellora nor the Descent of the Ganges from the rock-face at Mamallapuram.

These Islands, from which the Portuguese were expelled by a British fleet aiding Shah Abbas in 1622 A.D., and of which the advantages were tersely put to me by a native the other day in the words, “The land is silver and the sea is pearl,” are situated generally in lat. 26° and long. 50°, the exact position of the Portuguese fort on the larger island being given as lat. 26° 13′ 53„ N., long. 50° 31′ 45„ E. They are surrounded by shoal water on every side, which greatly adds to the beauty of the place. Thus, on looking out to sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor'-wester, it would seem as if Nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint of living green in her paint box; and then, wearying of the effort, had splashed an angry streak of purple into the foreground. The water itself is so clear that you can see far down into the coral depths, while springs of fresh water bubble up through the brine, both near the entrance of the harbour and at several other places along the coast.

In 1872 the Local Government of the province arranged to become purchaser of Dr. Mason's work on “Burma.” The author was an American missionary, who had spent nearly all his life in the country, and whose name is well known amongst Oriental scholars as having been the first to discover and bring to light Kaccayāno's Pali Grammar, which is to this day the handbook here in every village school. The last edition of “Burma” had been published in 1860. Since that date the writer had been amassing new collectanea, and it was agreed that he should personally supervise a fresh publication, which was intended, in his hands, to become a kind of encyclopædia of all scientific subjects connected with the province. But Dr. Mason was never destined to see the consummation of the work he had laboured at so long. For some time his missionary duties interfered with all active literary endeavour, and his death in 1874 finally prevented the execution of the original design. His notes and MSS., after remaining for three years in the possession of his widow, have been consigned by Government to one who is fully conscious how incompetent he is single-handed for the task.

The Burmese chronicles are emphatic that it was from the Mon city of Thaton that King Anuruddha in a.d. 1057 obtained the Pāli canon. Yet students of Burmese history have been by no means insensitive to the difficulty of reconciling this with the exclusively Hindu character of the more or less contemporary archæological remains at Thaton. The late Prince Damrong even went so far as to suggest that P'rӑ Paṭhóm, in the neighbouring Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravatī, rather than Thaton in Burma, must have been the city that Anuruddha conquered, and from which he derived his Hīnayāna Buddhism. I now propose shortly to reconsider the archæological evidence, in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the mechanics of Indian cultural expansion and of a certain passage in one of the Mon chronicles to which attention has not hitherto been directed in this particular connection. I believe that this may help us to resolve the difficulty.