Among the unfinished papers left by the late Dr. Johns, Mrs. Johns has found one which he was preparing on the dated tablets of the reign of Kandalānu, last Assyrian viceroy of Babylonia, who succeeded Šamaš-šum-ukšn, brother of Ašurbanipal of Assyria. It is certain from a group of tablets from Dilbat, now in the Ašshmolean Museum (Weld Collection), that Kandalānu (Κινηλαδνου) and Ašurbanipal were the same persons; for this group of tablets from the same collection has the following dates: 1924, 487, Belibni, year 2, month Šabat, day 29; 1924, 489, Ašur-nādin-šumi, year 4, month Adar, day 2; 1924, 491, Ašur-aḫi-iddin, year 6, month Tebit, day 27; one in possession of Major A. H. Burn, C.I.E., Delhi, India, Ašur-aḫi-iddin, year 8, month Ab, day 8; 1924, 490, Kan-da-la-nu, year 15, month Kislev, day 9; 1924, 485, Kan-da-la-nu, year 19, month Nisan, day 14; one in possession of R. S. Cooke, Esq., Ministry of Awqaf, Baghdad, Kan-da-la-nu, year 17, month Šabat, day 3; 1924, 482, Kan-da-la-nu, year 15, month Kislev, day 9; 1924, 484, Ašur-bāni-apli, year 23, month Nisan, day 29; 1928,1, excavated at Ḫursagkalamma in 1927 by M. Watelin, but dated at Erech, Ašur-bāni-apli, year 18, month Ululu, day 21.

All things must come to an end, and this series of papers, now running for ten years, is herewith concluded. This final instalment consists of an index, enabling a reader to find at once any character discussed in the series, with the year of the Journal and the page in the latter where the character appears. Naturally the years cannot pass without disclosing much that could be added or improved or qualified. But remembering that he who begins by revising may end by rewriting, I have left these studies as they were published in the Journal.

On comparing with one another the two most ancient periods of development of the Iranian mind, in language as well as in literature,—that primitive one, whose witness is the Avesta, with the period of renaissance under Sasanian rule,— we find at once this striking difference, that the former is purely national and Iranian, almost wholly free from any foreign influence, whilst the latter, as it appears in the Pahlavi translations and the inscriptions of the Sasanian kings, is overwhelmed by foreign, Semitic, or more accurately speaking, Aramæan elements. The difficulties in explaining the pure Persian substratum of the language of this latter period, for even here not every problem has yet been solved, are by no means to be compared with those offered by the Semitic forms and words, which appear to the Indo-german linguist utterly unknown, to the Semitic scholar more than strange. Though a great quantity of highly valuable material has already been collected and digested by European scholars, still I do not think it sufficient to enable us to decide in a satisfactory manner the following questions:—During what time did that close intercourse between the Iranian and Semitic races take place, the existence of which we are compelled to assume as the source of the Semitic portion of the Pahlavi language? Of what kind was this intercourse? And with which of the Aramæan nations in particular? The same questions demand an answer, in order to explain the numerous Iranian words which occur in the literature of the Babylonian Jews, in Syriac, in the Koran, and the most ancient Arabic poems.

The majority of Arab weather prognostics are, as might be expected, concerned with the winter season, when the changeable weather gives scope for forecasting. The summer months in most Arabic-speaking lands are rainless, and except for wind changes offer little or no field for the activity of the weather prognosticator. The sun and moon, the stars, the rainbow, mist, dew, thunder and lightning, birds and insects all form constituents in Arabic weather forecasts.

Nearly six years ago, G. E. Driver published a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, in which he examined some of the arguments dealing with the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel, which had been presented by Charles Boutflower in his work In and Around the Booh of Daniel. Three years later, in the course of an examination of the relation of Biblical Aramaic to other early Aramaic dialects, I took the opportunity of replying to a number of inaccurate or misleading statements and untenable hypotheses on the subject of the Aramaic of Daniel which appeared in the writings of certam defenders of the traditional date and place of origin of that book, including Boutflower. A rejoinder has now appeared from Boutflower's pen, dealing with a limited area of the field, in the form of a brief monograph, published under the title, Dadda-'idri, or The Aramaic of the Booh of Daniel. In this little book Boutflower replies to Driver and myself, and presents what he feels to be new light on the subject. A superficial reading might leave the impression that there was some ground for his theory, but a little examination reveals such omissions and assumptions and such misuse of evidence as to vitiate the argument. Indeed, the real issue is that of the validity of the evidence we possess, for fundamentally Boutflower seeks to set aside the evidence that has survived in favour of the evidence he assumes to have perished.

Consider the following passages from vocabularies:—

(1) CT. xiv, 3, K. 4325, iv–vi, 11. 18–25: ib. 5, K. 4368, iv–vi, 11. 8–16; and for col, iv, presumably 81–7–27, 147 (Meissner, Suppt., pl. 27):—

(2) CT. xiv, 14, K. 4396, 11. 10–13, dup. ib., S. 995, rev. 4–7:—

The following poem was written by a native of Bengal, named Pûrnânanda Chakravartin. Nothing is known as to his date; if the work were identical with the poem of the same name mentioned in the account of the Râmânuja system in Mâdhava's Sarvadarśanasamgraha, it would be, of course, older than the fourteenth century, but this is very uncertain; I should be inclined to assign it to a later date. The chief interest of the poem consists in its being a vigorous attack on the Vedânta system by a follower of the Pûrnaprajña school, which was founded by Madhva (or Ânandatîrtha) in the thirteenth century in the South of India. Some account of his system (which in many respects agrees with that of Râmânuja) is given in Wilson's “Hindu Sects;” but the fullest account is to be found in the fifth chapter of the Sarvadarśanasamgraha. Both the Râmânujas and the Pûrnaprajňas hold in opposition to the Vedânta that individual souls are distinct from Brahman; but they differ as to the sense in which they are thus distinct. The former maintain that “unity” and “plurality” are equally true from different points of View; the latter hold that the relation between the individual soul and Brahman is that of a master and a servant, and consequently that they are absolutely separate. It need not surprise us, therefore, to see that, although Râmânuja is praised in the fifty-third sloka of this poem as “the foremost of the learned,” some of his tenets are attacked in the eightieth.

Ever since the exact site of Aśoka's classic capital was determined for us by the keenness and sagacity of Colonel Waddell, it has been a dream of the Government of India in the Archæological Department to subject the site of Pāṭaliputra to an examination commensurate with its importance. Colonel Waddell had, however, so abundantly demonstrated, in his trial excavations, the difficulty and costliness of extended operations here, that the dream had, until recently, appeared remote of realization. The munificence of Mr. Ratan Tata of Bombay has made the undertaking possible, and his offer of twenty thousand rupees a year, for an indefinite number of years, has enabled the Archæological Department to take up the work on a scale that would otherwise have been far beyond our resources.

1. The following article is primarily an attempt to explain the equations, Sanskrit mārjāraḥ = Gujrāti mājār = Marāṭhī mājar; Sanskrit śmaśānáḥ = Gujrāti masāṇ = Marāṭhī masaṇ; Sanskrit palāśáḥ = Marāṭhī palas; Sanskrit upasthnam = Marāṭhī vaṭhāṇ.

The most popular instrument of music with both the Arabs and the Persians during what we term the Middle Ages was the lute. It was to them what the lyre and cithara were to the Greeks of old. At the same time it was not an instrument of the people. It was the instrument of the professional musician and all music theory was made conformable to its technique.

Much of the work that is attempted in the field of early Iranian historical geography is by necessity hypothetical, since there are no explicit descriptions of the spatial nature of political control in Iran before the accounts of Greek writers of the 5th century B.C. and later. The actual geography of Iran is however so precisely delimited that careful study of available accounts, when linked with a knowledge of the local topography of any area under investigation, will allow the student to suggest reconstructions for the scenes of various actions. In this case, I shall propose a possible geographical framework for a sequence of events that is recorded in the inscription of Darius I at Behistun, and which has not been satisfactorily localized before. Tentative as it is, the reconstruction seems to clarify a passage that dealt with events of the greatest importance for subsequent Achaemenid history.

The She King, usually translated the Book of the Odes, or the Classic of Poetry, is not so well known to the outside world as it deserves to be. It is one of the Classics or Canons of Chinese learning, and, like its companion books, is supposed not only to contain deep lessons of morality for the instruction of future ages, but to have been compiled, if not written, for the express purpose of their inculcation. The events recorded or alluded to in it are said to have taken place between 1765 and 585 B.C. Confucius himself is acknowledged to have been the compiler. Ssŭ Ma ch'ien states: ”The old poems amounted to more than 8000. Confucius removed those which were only repetitions of others, and selected those which would be serviceable for the inculcation of propriety and righteousness.” In other words he brought out a revised and expurgated edition. Constant allusions to the Odes are found in the Confucian Analects, the Master on all occasions expressing the highest admiration for the work, and enjoining on his disciples the necessity of a thorough study of it.