It is one of several disadvantages which the island of Ceylon has had to endure in its political separation from the Anglo-Indian empire, that its language has until lately been left out of the category of Indian tongues, and has received but little attention, except from the few scholars whom so small a country has been able to produce. There has also been an unfortunate wrangling among those who have touched the subject as to whether Sinhalese is a Turanian or an Aryan tongue. This dispute has now for some time been settled in favour of the Aryan origin; and we can but repeat the surprise of Professor Childers that Mr. Beames should omit the Sinhalese in his “Comparative Grammar of Modern Aryan Languages of India.”

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 Sogdian fragment of the Acts of St. George, published by O. Hansen in APAW., 1941, contains a number of words and passages mistranslated or left untranslated by the editor, which can be understood through careful examination of the text and its parallel versions. I have to thank Dr. Henning for lending me his reprint of Hansen's paper and allowing me to include in what follows his marginal notes on restoration and translation of numerous passages. The words zwby 273, and r'n' 278, which Hansen has not attempted to explain, will be treated first.

The plates which accompany this article have only recently been rescued from an obscure corner, where they had lain for years unappreciated. They originally constituted one division of a comprehensive medallic series, illustrative of the annals of the Sassanian Kings of Persia, which were prepared under the supervision of the late J. R. Steuart, from specimens in his own cabinets, and executed by the same conscientious Italian artist who engraved the copper-plates of the Sauráshtran coins inserted in one of the earliest numbers of our Journal (vol. iv. p. 273, o.s.).

The inscriptions on four faces of the stone pillar outside the Jo-khang at Lhasa concerning the treaty of A.D. 821/823 between the Tibetan king, Khri gTsug-lde-brtsan Ral-pa-can, and the Chinese emperor Mu-tsung, have been edited in whole or in part several times during the past century. Particulars of those publications can be seen in the excellent edition by Professor Fang-kuei Li in T'oung Pao, XLIV, 1956, which is the only one in English to contain the four inscriptions in Tibetan and also the Chinese versions of three of them which give the document its unique linguistic importance.

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.

The poet now offers reverence to the forty-two Harivallabhas, who were specially dear to the Lord In the text I have numbered these for convenience of reference.

The formation of the future tense is often mentioned in discussions on the classification of the modern Indo-Aryan languages. An -s- type of future occurs in Gujarati, Lahnda, and Jaipuri, an -h- type of future exists side by side with participial formations in Marwari, Hindi (Braj), and Bundeli, and in Bhojpuri and Awadhi (in the third persons only), as well as in Kashmiri, where it has assumed the meaning of a past conditional. Despite this Marwari belongs to the -s- group, forms with -h- being found in those dialects of Marwari that regularly have voiceless -h- < -s-. The explanation of the Kashmiri forms is similar (ś > h and -ṣy- > -śś- > -h- in Kashmiri). Thus -s- forms in principle are found over a large part of the North-West and West of India. Attempts have been made to trace back the modern conditions to earlier stages, and S. Sen claims that the two types of future go back to different Indo-European originals: “From early times there were dialectal forms with the base-affix -ha-, which became quite dominant in Apabhraṃśa.” (This is incorrect.) “The origin seems to have been the I.E. stem affix *-so-, OIA. -sa-, occurring in the desiderative, the aorist, and as a root-determinative.” The accepted opinion is that the two types of future have the same origin, the OIA. future suffix -i-ṣya-, and that differentiation did not take place till the Middle Indo-Aryan period. As has been shown conclusively by Turner and by Bloch, the future suffix of Sanskrit could have in MIA. a special development into -h- instead of -ss- which is phonetically regular, because it was in a weak position, being a terminational element.

On trouvera dans le Journal, 1900, p. 345, une description sommaire de la petite collection de MSS. que C. Bendall avait empruntés à la Bibliothèque de Kaṭhmaṇḍu et dont il m'a laissé de bonnes photographies. La maladio, hélas! ne lui a pas permis de la publier dans son ensemble: il n'en a fait paraître que deux pièces, d'ailleurs infiniment curieuses, un fragment du Cullavagga et une page du Bhikṣuṇīprātimokṣa de l'Eglise du Mahāyāna. Mais de nombreuses notes manuscrites faciliteront ma tâche d'éditeur, et continueront pour moi le charme mélancolique d'une collaboration qui fut naguères la meilleure joie de mes études.

The main scheme of creation in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature is adopted from the Young Avesta. In this scheme Ohrmazd creates the world in the manner of a skillful craftsman who conceives of the form of his product and then fashions it in matter. The number of the constituents of the world and the sequence in which they are created are already fixed in the Avesta. Pahlavi authors draw on Greek philosophical tradition to rationalise their account of the creation of the world. The article also explores some of the complications that their philosophical elaboration of the Avestan scheme occasions.

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.

Since their first publication in 1922, two Islamic inscriptions formed an essential basis of the early history of Islam in Champa. Recently, however, they have been shown to have originated, not from Southeast Asia, but from Tunisia. It is clear that either there was an error regarding their provenance, or it was deliberately falsified. The implications of this are discussed, and the remaining evidence of early Islamic presence in Champa is reassessed. It is suggested that there is now no good evidence of any Islamic presence there until after the sixteenth century. In relation to this issue, the maritime links between China and the Islamic world are examined, as also are other examples of possible falsification of history.

According to recent research, after the Song dynasty, there was a transformation of the political culture in imperial China according to which Confucian elites and dynastic rulers ceased to construct political legitimacy by interpreting prophecies. By examining the process of how Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty, utilized a popular prophecy and how he concealed his utilization of this prophecy after enthronement, this article offers a more nuanced narrative of the transformation. It shows that during the Yuan-Ming transition, rulers sought to employ prophecies to construct their image as sovereigns favoured by Heaven, but, ironically, in official writings rulers tended to hide their utilization of prophecies so as to highlight their virtues which deserved the Mandate of Heaven. This article argues that after the Song, the role of prophecies changed in the political arena—not from important to unimportant, but from officially recognized to officially concealed.

On February 9th, 1874, I read a paper before the Royal Geographical Society entitled, “Notes of a Journey outside the Great Wall of China,” made by the Hon. T. G. Grosvenor and myself in the autumn of 1872, including an account of a visit to the ruins of the city of Shangtu, the ancient northern capital of the Yuan Dynasty, described in such glowing terms by Marco Polo, who was there in the reign of its founder, the famous Kublai Khan. They are situate on the northern bank of the Lan-ho—the Shangtu River—about twenty-five miles to the north-west of Dolonnor, the populous city founded by the Emperor Kang-hi, as a trading mart between the Chinese and the Mongolian tribes. These ruins were identified by the existence of a marble memorial tablet, with an inscription of the reign of Kublai, in an ancient form of the Chinese character. A more detailed account of the history of the city so frequently referred to by mediaeval travellers, derived from Chinese and other sources, has been drawn up; and a plan of the ruins, with a facsimile and translation of the inscription, added, in the hope that it may prove of some interest to the Members of your Society.

The Khaláṣat-at-Tawáríkh is a history of India from the days of the Pandus and Kurus down to the defeat of Dárá Shikoh and the beginning of the reign of Aurangzeb. It was written two hundred years ago (1695–96) by an upcountry Hindu, whose name has been variously given as Sanjan, Suján, Saján, Shuján, and Subhán Rái. He does not name himself in his history, but he tells us that he was a native of Batála, in the Panjáb, and that he had been from his youth up in the employment of high officials as a munshi or secretary. Apparently he was a kshatriya by caste, but in my opinion he was almost, if not quite, a Sikh by religion.