At the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, on the 21st Nov., 1864, I undertook the task of establishing the identity of the Xandrames of Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius, the undesignated king of the Gangetic provinces of other Classic Authors—with the potentate whose name appears on a very extensive series of local mintages under the bilingual Bactrian and Indo-Pali form of Kraṇanda.

The Mahâtmya Devî is an episode of thirteen chapters (81–93) occurring in the Mârkaṇḍeya Purâṇa, and, as the title suggests, is occupied with an account of the Great power of Devî, or Durgâ, the wife of Śiva. The story is introduced by a Râjâ, named Suratha, and a Vaisya, named Samâdhi. The Râjâ has been overcome by enemies, and finally driven from his kingdom by his ministers, who have taken possession of his treasures. The Vaisya's own family have risen against him and sent him adrift, after seizing on his riches. Both of these two unfortunate persons retire into solitude to meditate on their troubles, and in the course of their wanderings in a certain forest, they meet and become acquainted. They mutually relate their difficulties, and in comparing notes, find with astonishment that they are both possessed by the same feeling—attachment or affection for those who have ill-treated them. The Râjâ, is full of anxiety for the welfare of the ministers and people who have risen against him; the Vaisya still retains his affection for his unworthy wives and children. They ask each other—What means this ? How is it that we still feel affection for worthless people, even though they be relations ? Unable to discover any solution of this difficulty, they agree to consult the Sage, whose dwelling was not far distant.

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:—

Amongst the Persian manuscripts belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society is one, now numbered 180 (not described in Morley's Catalogue), which contains a very interesting monograph on the city of Iṣfahán. As these local histories are often of very great importance in supplementing the large general histories, with the contents of which we are gradually becoming acquainted, I was desirous of reading it through, which, thanks to the laudable generosity of our Society in lending its manuscripts to private individuals, I was enabled to do. Of the notes which I made during its perusal this article is the outcome.

The Jews have never practically lost sight of the Samaritans, unlike the Christians, who for at least a thousand years had entirely forgotten their existence, as no writer or pilgrim to the Holy Land speaks of them with the solitary exception of Mandeville. It was therefore a great surprise to the Western world when at the beginning of the seventeenth century the darkness began to be lifted, and through Scaliger, Huntingdon, and Della Valle for the first time authentic news about the Samaritans, their language, and their Bible began to reach Europe.

The following notes are based on material which I collected in Kerman during the months June to October, 1914. The spare time at my command was less than I could have desired, and a Benjamin's portion of it was devoted to the more interesting and less exploited Bakhtiari dialect, while the local Kermani dialect provided a further distraction. In these circumstances my researches were not exhaustive, but I think they will be found to have done something towards rendering our knowledge more exact.

No one can fully appreciate the great value of this work to all students of ethnology until they realize the historical importance of an accurate classification of the characteristic differences which divide the social strata known as the castes living in a country occupying the geographical position of Bengal. Bengal is practically the country of the Deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and of the Western rivers, which rise in the Vindhyan range, called by Hindu geographers the Sukti mountains, and flow down thence to the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal. It has always been one of the great highways by which Southern tribes moved northward and Northern tribes southward, and was, owing to its geographical advantages and its fertile soil, civilized and settled before the advent of the Aryan conquerors to North-western India. It is for this reason that we find in Bengal the undisturbed remains and the still living and almost unchanged representatives of some of the principal races who are described by the poets of the Rigveda under the general name of Dasyus, a name which, as Zimmer shows, merely means the people of the country or “desh.” It was from the union of the people of Bengal called the Maghadas or Mughs with the Northern Kushikas or sons of Kush the tortoise that the first great Indian Empire arose, which was formed by the two races ruled by the king called in the Mahābhārata Jarasandha.

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.

In the course of my research into the character, role and influence of the British officials in Tibet during the 1904–47 period, it became apparent that previous scholarship had failed fully to confront an issue which would explain the clear decline in Anglo-Tibetan relations during the latter half of the 1920s. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the British officer then in immediate charge of Anglo-Tibetan relations attempted to promote a coup d'état in Tibet, in order to transfer secular power from the Dalai Lama and his court to Tsarong Shape, the forward-thinking Commander-in-Chief of the Tibetan Army. This possibility has been rejected by the leading European historians of the period, but their conclusions are, I will argue, in need of reassessment.

Nothing could be more important for a student of Indian thought than to have a correct notion of the Moksha of the Vedánta, which is so curiously allied to the Buddistic Nievána. And as there are some methods of translation which seem to me to give an inaccurate tone to some of the most scholarly treatises in Europe on the subject, I venture to submit a few remarks on one or two points of importance. Is it quite correct to treat Moksha as more a matter of metaphysical knowledge than the reward of moral improvement, as Dr. Deussen does in the following passage?

Yü of Hsia “was styled Wênming.” Yü's father was Kun, whose father was the Emperor Ch'uanbsü, whose father was Ch'angyi, whose father was Huangti; so Yü was Huangti's great - great - grandson, and Ch‘uanhsü’s grandson. Yü's great-grandfather Ch'angyi and his father Kun were both unable to sit on the Imperial throne, being simply officials. In the time of the Emperor Yao “the deluge assailed the heavens, and in its vast expanse encompassed the mountains, and overtopped the hills, so that the common people were troubled about it. Yao sought for one capable of controlling the waters. All the officials and presidents of the four mountains said, ‘Kun might do it.’ Yao said, ‘Kun is a man who disobeys orders, and ruins his companions. He will not do.’ The president of the four mountains said,” Among his equals there is no one so worthy as Kun; I wish your Majesty would “try him.” Upon which Yao, giving heed to the president of the four mountains, employed Kun to control the waters “for nine years,” but the waters did not abate, “and the work was unaccomplished.” Then the Emperor Yao sought a man in his stead, and secured Shun. Shun being employed in the public service was associated with the Son of Heaven in the administration.

In my paper on Tibetan Seals in the last number of this Journal (JRAS., 1915, p. 1) I regret that, owing to there not being time for a second revision of the proof, on account of my being in India, there are certain misprints, which I correct below.

For 'abar in line 6 of the inscription of the seal on p. 7, read hbar.

For the top word of the third column of the seal on p. 8, read.

For the second word in the same column, read

For the bottom word in the sixth column of the above seal, read

This study examines a little-known case of Enlightenment knowledge transmission centred on the rock-cut monument of Darius I at Bīsotūn in western Iran. It discusses a report on the monument published by the cartographer and historian Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, which originated with the Decalced Carmelite monk Emmanuel de Saint-Albert (born Jean-Claude Ballyet); who transmitted it to Isaac Bellet, a doctor involved in secret negotiations in Constantinople; who in turn sent it to Louis, Duke d'Orléans, in Paris; who passed it on to d'Anville. The collison of scholarly interest, political service and scientific personality offers a fascinating case study of the Enlightenment ‘republic of letters’ in action.

By correlating literary evidence, avian ethology and neurophysiology I will try to demonstrate why Vālmīki chose a pair of Sārus Cranes, and not any other avian species, to epitomise grief and sorrow in the Rāmāyaṇa. This choice illustrates the importance of personal experience of the living reality (behaviour of Sārus Cranes); but the grief, śoka, as experienced by Vālmīki, became in later critical literature, the rasa of karuṇa, the aesthetic appreciation of grief, as suggested by Ānandavardhana and explained by Abhinavagupta. By emphasising the central importance of affective states (sthāyibhāvas) in life as well as in the arts (rasas) Vālmīki, Abhinavagupta and Ānandavardhana appear to have had a perception of the human condition that is consistent with recent developments in affective neuroscience; and thus it is the pitch and the tonal quality of the cries of grief that convey the depth and universality (sādhāraṇatva) of the emotion.

After Aden came under British rule (1839) its Jewish community was reinforced by Jewish immigrants from inland Yemen and also from other Middle Eastern countries. Some of the Adeni Jews, most of them British subjects, entered the Indian-British commercial network and expanded it to East Africa, mainly to Ethiopia, founding commercial strongholds there. From the late nineteenth century, Jews coming from Yemen joined the existing Adeni settlements.

This paper compares the reasons for the emigration to Ethiopia of Adeni Jews and Yemeni Jews, and their economic and social status under Italian colonial regime (established in Eritrea in the 1880s). It discusses relations between these Jews, which it argues, were determined by the position of each group in the colonial hierarchy, and by the necessity of sustaining religious-communal life. Thus, in spite of their shared Yemeni origin and attendance at the same communal institutions, ethnicity and religion proved weaker than social and economic considerations, and the two groups cultivated a separate identity.