In the previous papers of this series I have tried to trace in outline a truthful sketch of the general course of early Indian History. The evidence I have consulted and set forth has led me to believe that the government, social institutions, and the fundamental principles of the religion of the country all originated among tribes for the most part of Dravidian race, who came into India from the Euphrates valley. In dealing with this evidence I have tried to trace the origin of the tribes who successively and simultaneously ruled India, the races to which they belonged, and the religious beliefs they held. In doing this I have also adduced proofs to show that the same races who introduced civilized and stable government into India performed the same task in the countries of Western Asia, in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In the course of my argument I have laid stress on the value of early religious and astronomical history as a guide, not only to the social history of India, but to that of all countries ruled by immigrant tribes of Akkadian race. My conclusions as to Indian history were formed chiefly from a study of the Mahābhārata and Rigveda, and these authorities were largely supplemented by references to Greek and Latin historians, to Akkadian and Assyrian history, and by information derived from the present state of the country, its religious movements and social institutions.

From what I can collect regarding the Sráwacs, or laity of the Jains, they appear to be the only considerable remnant in India of the earlier Jains, or Arhatas. They follow principally the trade of Banyas, dealing in grain; and as Sráwac Banyas, necessarily adhere to the Jain laws: but as their particular calling seems to have required rules for their guidance, much of the twelve vratas refers to their commercial transactions, as connected with moral duties. I do not think these vratas formed a part of the older Jain institutes at all; nor could such a code be brought to apply to any except the subordinate tribes, it being quite unsuitable to any purpose of government.

THE scientific world of England, which has taken the lead in so many other branches of palæographie study, has been content to leave the investigation of the Cuneiform Inscriptions almost entirely to Continental scholars; and, which is still more unusual in the history of Eastern archæology, the origin and progress of this investigation, and the results that have been obtained from it, appear to be but imperfectly known amongst us. Individuals doubtless of all countries, whether Englishmen or foreigners, engaged in the study of Oriental antiquities, have followed with a curious eye the successive discoveries that have been made; but general attention, or, at any rate, an attention commensurate with the value of the discoveries, has not been hitherto in England directed to the subject; and if I were to take up the inquiry, therefore, at the point where Professor Lassen has left it, interpretations which would satisfy the criticism of France or Germany might be received in London with extreme suspicion. This circumstance has suggested the propriety of adopting a more extended and elaborate form of introduction to a Memoir on the Cuneiform Inscriptions, than the present advanced stage of the inquiry can be considered rigidly to demand. In a study, indeed, of which the value depends entirely on the authenticity, and of which the authenticity can alone be verified by the constant and consentient results of a cautious and severe analysis, it is obviously better to err on the side of prolixity than of omission. A defective or imperfect link will destroy the integrity of the whole chain of evidence, while accumulative proofs, although they may encumber and perhaps disfigure the argument, will at the same time but contribute to its strength.

In submitting these notices to the attention of the Society, the object is to bring under its view the internal revenue economy of a Hindu village that has never been under the direct control of any European officer of the East-India Company, in order to exhibit a fair specimen of ancient usages in the south of India, and to shew with accuracy, the proportion of the produce of the soil customarily taken in kind, in latter times, as land revenue, the rights of the parties paying revenue, and those of the individual who, by grant from the sovereign, is entitled to collect that revenue.

From about the year 1823 the education of the people had been a matter of increasing concern to those responsible for the administration of the East India Company's territories in India. The authorities both in London and in India began to recognize that it was closely connected with the carrying out of the plans and policies of the Government. In London it was beginning to be realized that efficient government was altogether beyond the capacity of the East India Company unless Indians were employed on a scale greater than hitherto had been considered expedient. In India the increased importance attached to education led, in 1823, to the creation of the Committee of Public Instruction, and during the next few years there developed within the Committee a group which sought primarily to increase facilities in India for education along Western lines through the medium of the English language.

Sir Charles Bell has given in this Journal (July, p. 710) a detailed account of this important book on Tibet, which, though already edited in Italian by Puini, has remained for many years insufficiently known. It is not, therefore, my purpose to write a new review of the book.

In 1668 Francis Bernier was on his way back to Europe after a residence of eight years at the Court of the Great Mughal. At Surat he met M. Carron, who had been sent by Colbert, the great Finance Minister of Louis XIV, to lay the foundations of trade between France and India on behalf of the French East India Company (la Compagnie des Indes Orientales) which had been founded in 1664. It was at Carron's request that Bernier wrote the Memoir which is here published in an English translation.

On a recent-excursion through part of Asia Minor, being accompanied by a friend who spoke Turkish and Armenian perfectly, I noted some information that he collected, first regarding the long famed silvery white-hair goat of Angora, and next about a goat resembling the shawl goat of Thibet, that exists throughout the country to which the first beautiful animal is peculiar. I was about to forward the said notes from Constantinople, with a box of specimens for the Society, when learning that the second species of goat alluded to abounded in other parts of Turkey, through or near which I should shortly travel, I put my memorandums aside in the hope of being able to extend them. I now beg to offer the result of the whole inquiry thus far, having for the convenience of illustration separated the details concerning each race of the animal under remark.

The MS. from which the text of the Nile Service is taken, is numbered Or. 4951, and is a recent acquisition of the British Museum. It consists of 69 paper leaves, measuring about 6£ ins. by 5 ins., with mostly 15 lines to a page. The quires, 7 in number, are of 10 leaves each (the last leaf being blank). The Syriac letters by which the quires are numbered are written in the middle of the lower margin, both on the last and the first page of each quire. Thus, on fol. 10b, the letter denotes the end of the first quire, and the same letter also stands on fol. 11a; the letters etc., are similarly written on foil. 20 b and 21 a, foil. 30b and 31a, etc. The only exception is the absence of the letter on fol. 61a. The style of writing, though smaller, approaches yery nearly to that of pi. xx (representing fol. 34 of Add. 14,664) in vol. iii of Wright's “Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the British Museum,” which has been assigned to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The letter “rlsh” is, with very few exceptions, written (with two dots instead of one), and the “daleth” is, as a rule, not distinguished by a dot below. There are no diacritic points below the letters, and points over the text (see the first facsimile, representing fol. 38b of the MS. chosen to exemplify some of the characteristics mentioned here)are mainly employed in the following cases:

There are few facts in Eastern history better authenticated than the invasion of India by Mahmúd of Ghizni: the details of his sack of Pattan Somnath have been narrated, in some detail, even by the accurate Gibbon, and a few particulars, therefore, regarding the present condition of this far-famed temple and city, collected in October, 1830, may not be unacceptable to the Society.

Geographical Position.—About nine miles inland of Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast, Lat. 11° 56′ N., are beds of limestone rising in gentle undulations, and running in a S.E. by E. direction, almost parallel with the coast, for a distance, as far as I was able to trace, of about four or fire miles. Of these strata no detailed account had been published up to the date of my visit in March, 1840. They are seen to crop out near the villages of Sydapett, Carassoo, Coolypett, and Vurdavoor, from a superincumbent tertiary lateritic grit imbedding large quantities of silicified wood, and of which a description has been given by Lieutenant Warren: who has, however, overlooked the fossil limestone. The beds of the latter dip very slightly easterly. The greater part of the surface of the limestone is concealed by the soil and vegetation. A short distance further towards the west it is again covered by beds of the silicified wood deposit, and both are underlaid by plutonic and hypogene rocks, which crop out near the village of Trivicary, and form the western boundary of the fossiliferous beds. Rolled and angular fragments of the hypogene rocks are scattered here and there over the limestone, as well as fragments from the silicified wood beds, and from the limestone itself; the surface of the latter has evidently been exposed by the denudation of the superincumbent beds. It appears in surface-worn tables traversed by innumerable fissures.

The following account of the early relations between the countries east and west of the Halys is the result of a journey made from Smyrna by the Hermus valley, Doghanlu, Angora, Boghaz Keui, and Euyuk to Sivas (May 13 to June 29, 1881), on which Col. Sir Charles Wilson kindly invited me to accompany him. The Roman roads of the district were a frequent topic of conversation; and the knowledge of the routes, on which this article rests, has been gained from his skill. I afterwards found that the information I had thus acquired from Mm of the Roman roadsystem had an important bearing on the early history of these countries.

In a former number of this journal I published a specimen translation of one of the Rasā'il of Junayd, as an announcement of my intention to make that famous personage the subject of a monograph. It will be useful at this stage to print the text and translation of what is one of the most interesting of the little treatises preserved in the Istanbul manuscript, both because of its contents, and also for the reason that it is the only work of Junayd for which we have a second authority. It is unfortunately true that the Istanbul manuscript, as the copyist himself is at pains to admit. is derived from a very faulty archetype, and with such an author as Junayd the work of emendation is necessarily attended with countless pitfalls. The Cairo manuscript of the Kitāb Dawā' al-arwāḥ exhibits roughly ninety variants as compared with the Istanbul manuscript, in the space of rather less than 2½ folios. In by far the majority of places the Istanbul manuscript appears to be the more correct.

The Ariyapariyesana-Sutta in the Majjhima-Nikāya specifically mentions these two as the main points of Buddhism: (1) Paṭiccasamuppāda and (2) Nibbāna. The first point is the basic idea of Buddhism as a system of thought, and the second, the goal of Buddhism as a religion. The former is introduced as idappaccayatā, “causal relations.” The latter is introduced as sabbasaṅkhāra-samatho sabbūpadhipaṭinissaggo taṇhāhākkhayo virāgo nirodho, “the stilling of all plastic forces or the renunciation of all worldly ties, the extirpation of craving, passionlessness, peace.” The Sutta does not, however, offer any formula to interconnect the two.

I am to-day at Ser Yazd, eight farsakhs south of Yazd, on my road to Kennan…. As I suppose the Gabrs interest you most, I will begin my rambling letter with them. I heard at Shiraz, where there are occasionally a few Gabr shopkeepers, that in Kermán there are only a few illiterate Gabrs; so when I at Darebjard heard that the road lies for six days through a complete desert, without any habitation, or the least cultivation, I determined to go straight to Yazd, which would be passing over ground that had been travelled by few or no Europeans before. I found at least on my map many places laid down wrong, even Yazd; and I am now on the road to Kermán, only on account of my having heard at Yazd, that though there are there only one hundred houses, (or about four or five hundred Gabrs), still they have from olden time a good many books, far more than there are in Yazd; whether it be true or not, I shall tell you by and bye.

A Letter from a man called Ishkun-Dagan has been published by M. Thureau-Dangin in Revue d'Assyriologie, xxiii, pp. 23 ff. Another letter of this man has recently been presented to the Trustees of the British Museum by Dr. N. L. Corkill, formerly Civil Surgeon, Baghdad, who very kindly allowed me to study and copy it at Baghdad; it is now numbered 121205. The tablet was obtained in Nasiriyah, and though the statement of the fellaḥ to whom it once belonged that it was found at Sinkarah is of no value, it certainly came from a site in the Muntafik area, very possibly from illicit excavations which are known to have been conducted at Warka. The tablet was probably found at the same time and in the same place as the tablet now in the Louvre, so that they were found in the archive of the sender, not of the addressee, a curious circumstance for which many parallels could be cited. The writing is delicate, very accurate, and large. Owing to an accident when I was examining the tablet at Baghdad, after making my copy of the text which was then complete, the tablet was broken and some signs have now been injured in lines 21–4.

The composition of an Indian court of justice, conformably with the ancient Hindu institutions, being very imperfectly understood, and many erroneous notions having become prevalent on this subject, it appears to deserve a more full investigation than it has yet undergone; and, with this view, I submit to the Society the result of a careful perusal of original authorities of Hindu law relating to that point.