The original inhabitants of Mount Atlas, and of nearly all the provinces of Maghrib-ul-Aksa, or the present empire of Marocco, are usually divided into two tribes — namely, the Berebbers and the Shelluhhs, both descended from the ancient Mauritanians and Gætulians; perhaps even from the Libyes of Sallust. These two tribes differ essentially from each other; and it is not without reason, that those travellers and geographers, to whom we are indebted for the best information with respect to Marocco, have asserted that the Shelluhhs are not Berebbers. The Moors, or Arabian inhabitants of the country, consider them as two nations of a different origin; as well on account of their manners and the diversity of their natural dispositions, as from the entirely distinct profile of the face, and from their dialects, which differ so much, that they cannot converse together without the aid of an interpreter. Mr. James Grey Jackson, in his Account of the Empire of Marocco, and of the District of Sus, confirms this assertion by a list of words of common use in both languages; and, most certainly, they prove nothing less than a common origin. But such differences, radical or accidental, may be met with in almost all the sister languages. It is, for instance, a curious fact, that the very leading Shelluhh words, which Mr. Jackson quotes as altogether differing from the Berebber, as woman, wife, boy, girl, &c. differ just as much, if not more, in the Swedish, Danish, German, and Dutch languages, which, most undoubtedly, are of one and the same origin. This observation holds good even with respect to the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian languages. What is more certain, and beyond all doubt, is, that the pretended Berebbers and Shelluhhs live separately and that they bear very little, if any, relation to each other. Although their habitations are sometimes very near, they never have any social intercourse; nor does an instance exist of individuals of one tribe having intermarried with the other.

The Persian literati have always delighted in poetic symbols and metaphors, and subtle plays on words. Therefore we should not be surprised to find that, during a brief period in the first part of the Ṣafavid dynasty when it was possible to use pictures in patterns and designs, these pictures often held symbolic connotations, conveyed through visual puns. Moreover, it seems that the second meaning carried in these puns usually involved a religious message, relating to the spiritual tradition of those Muslim mystics known as Ṣūfīs, who had great influence at court during that same short period. This clever use of pictures to convey ideas was apparently soon forgotten, after the practice was abandoned. But it comes to light again when we undertake to analyse certain early Ṣafavid designs – especially the patterns on various carpets from that period, known to have been woven between approximately 1520 and 1620 of our era.

The subject of Transliteration has lately occupied the attention of the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society. After careful consideration they gave their approval to the system for transliterating the alphabets of Oriental languages into the Roman character, which had been recommended by the Oriental Congress at Geneva in 1895; and after suggesting a few emendations, with the object of securing consistency and harmony in some comparatively unimportant details, commended it to the favourable attention of those Oriental scholars with whom they are connected, and over whom they have any influence. This seems, therefore, a good opportunity to make an effort for the introduction of a similar system among those who are engaged in the very arduous labour of reducing hitherto unwritten languages to writing. The number of such languages is great, and work among them is annually increasing. It is, perhaps, more necessary that an attempt at unanimity should be made in this instance even than in the case of languages which, like those of Oriental nations, themselves possess old and venerable alphabets. The characters of these alphabets have come down to us from a remote antiquity, have borne the tests of time and use, and have satisfied several generations of men who have long employed them; and, as a general rule, it is far better that they should be learned and used by European students and scholars than that they should be transliterated into the Roman or any other character. But the case of “illiterate” languages, if we may be allowed the terra, is quite different.

From several centuries before the Christian era a double stream of traders and adventurers began to flow into Indo-China from, respectively, Northern and Southern India, reaching the upper parts of the peninsula by land through Burmā and its southern coasts by sea, and founding there settlements and commercial stations. Brahmanism and, later on, Buddhism (third century b.c.), with most other achievements of Indian culture, followed in the wake of these pioneers; and thus it is to ancient India that Indo-China owes her early civilization. By the dawn of the Christian era, as I have elsewhere demonstrated, Buddhism had already gained a firm foothold on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula near the head of the Gulf of Siām, whence it advanced and soon spread all over the country of the Më-Nam Delta. On the other hand, Brahmanism had established itself in Central and Northern Siām, where Swankhalôk and Sukhôthai formed its principal foci. It is not till about four centuries later that we begin to hear of Nagara Śrī Dharmarāja (Dharmanagara), or Ligor, as the chief centre of both Buddhism and Brahmanism on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula; and to find both faiths—but more especially Buddhism—firmly established in the territory of P‘hraḥ Prathom in the present Nakhōn C‘hai Śrī province, in the Më-Nam Delta.

There are few aspects of Vedic civilization and history more neglected by modern scholars than the organization of ancient Brahmanical society in exogamous clans. It is, of course, recognized that from the time of the Sūtras to the present day the rule has always been that, as well as marrying within his caste, a Brahman must marry outside his own gotra; but further than this few have cared to inquire. The reason for this neglect is no doubt in part the extraordinary state of textual corruption in which our chief sources, the Pravara-adhyāyas of the Śrauta Sūtras, have come down to us, as well as the suspicion, not altogether justified, that the material contained in them is not truly “historical”, or at least has suffered a considerable amount of “künstliche Behandlung”.

This article seeks to explain the traditional celebration of Cold Food and some other springtime customs in the mid-Yangzi basin in central China. In these rituals the ancestors and their influence in the production of new rice were highlighted while, at the same time, social reproduction through women was temporarily suspended. Female generative energy was not allowed to compete with the creative force of the ancestors in the fields. Cold Food is seen as a trope on seasonal agricultural tasks. The myth of moral constancy, which accompanied the festival, was on another deeper level an iconic exploration of the preparation of the agricultural fields. Death was seen to propel life, ancestral energy being transferred to the living through rice.

In March, 1857, the Royal Asiatic Society received from Mr. Fox Talbot, in a sealed, packet, a translation of a Cuneiform inscription on a cylinder, bearing the name of Tiglath Pileser; the first of the inscriptions lithographed under the superintendence of Sir Henry Rawlinson by authority of the Trustees of the British Museum under the sanction of the Government. The object of Mr. Talbot in sending his translation in this manner to the Society is best explained by the following note, with which the packet was accompanied:—

1. I have numbered the lines in both texts for ease of reference. This inscription is undamaged except for the lower left-hand corner.

About the date of the Maritime Code (or more strictly Digest) of Malacca, Malay copyists have gone out of their way to create confusion. Maxwell Malay MS. 47 in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, relates how sea-captains went to Bendahara Paduka Sri Maharaja to approach Sultan Muhammad (d. ca. A.D. 1446) to ratify maritime laws, and Raffles MSS. 33, 34, and 74 cite both Paduka Sri Maharaja, Bendahara to Sultan Mahmud (asc. 1488, d. 1530), and at the very end of the same paragraph Sri Nara 'diraja, Bendahara to Sultan Muhammad. Raffles MS. 68 ascribes both the Malacca Code and Maritime Laws to Muhammad. Most MSS. ascribe the latter to Mahnaud's reign and all of them are marked by Bugis maritime terms. There is no record of Bugis ships frequenting Malacca as early as 1446 and there seems no doubt that scholars have been right in assigning the Maritime Digest to the time of Sultan Mahmud.

The existence of an ancient Indian colony in Armenia is well known to Armenian scholars, but Indianists have paid little attention to it. We owe our knowledge of it to Zenob, a Syrian, and a native of Glak (Klag), which Mr. Ellis suggests may be the Armenian equivalent of Kerak. Zenob became an ecclesiastic in an unknown town of Cappadocia called Nystra, and was the companion of St. Gregory the Illuminator on an idol-smashing tour through Armenia, about the year 304 a.d. By St. Gregory's command he wrote an account of this expedition to his Cappadocian brethren, and in it he gives a lively account of the Illuminator's little war with the Indian idolaters of Tarôn (Darôn). Zenob's history, composed originally in Syriac, has come down to us in an Armenian version, which has suffered from revision. It has been twice translated into French, and part of it into English. Zenob's work has the charm and freshness of a contemporary narrative, and throws a good deal of light on the early history of monachism and the worship of relics. He was well acquainted with the Indians he mentions, as he was for twenty years Abbot of the Convent of the Nine Springs, founded by St. Gregory on the site of the Indian temple. The convent beacme one of the most famous in Armenia, and was popularly known from the time of Zenob as the convent of Glak.

The Nyāya-sūtra, which is supposed to be the earliest work extant on Nyāya philosophy, treats of four distinct subjects, viz., (1) the art of debate (tarka), (2) the means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa), (3) the doctrine of syllogism (avayava), and (4) the examination of contemporaneous philosophical doctrines (anya-mata-parīkṣā). The first subject, ample references to which are met with in the old Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and Jaina works, seems to have been first handled by a sage named Gotama or Gautama, who is reputed to have flourished in Mithilā (North Behar) about 550 b.c. The second subject, which is also referred to in old books, was associated with the art of debate at a very early stage. These two subjects, combined together, constitute the Tarka - śāstra (the philosophy of reasoning), popularly known as Gautamī vidyā (the Gotamide learning).