To the life and doctrines of the famous founder of the Ḳādirī Order a certain amount of attention has already been devoted in Europe, yet scarcely sufficient to render further investigation of the subject unnecessary.

For the origination of this line of investigation we are mainly indebted to M. Vivien de Saint-Martin, who, in his “ Étude sur la géographie et les populations primitives du Nord-Ouest de l'lnde, d'après les Hymnes Védiques,” correctly defined one of the leading peculiarities of those chants, “ c'est que les indications géographiques des hymnes du Véda se rapportent à peu près exclusivement à des rivières.”

Anyone glancing casually at this book, weighing as it does nearly 3 kg., with a very attractive dust-jacket, 48 pages of illustrations in colour, and a vast number in black-and-white, besides various maps, might be forgiven for assuming that it was yet another of the many coffee-table productions purporting to display the arts and architecture of Islam. In fact the text is of great interest to scholars in many branches of oriental research and it is one of the most important books about Arabia ever to have been published. Until recently most contributions to our knowledge of the country were made either by untravelled scholars in the West, or by travellers who, even if they spoke the language well, could not, or did not, read the chronicles and other writings, legal, descriptive and poetical, which contain relevant information. Indeed, many of the works to which we can now refer have been published, or even become known, only in the last few decades. The older travellers could not command the literary evidence in the way that Serjeant does. Hugh Scott, for example, wrote an excellent book about the Yemen. He was a meticulous observer with varied accomplishments and wide interests, but he spoke only a few words of Arabic and could not read it at all.

Among the most interesting exhibits at the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum at Leyden are the Meccan musical instruments presented by the well-known Arabist and traveller, Professor Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje. They are displayed, in a special case containing other Meccan objects, in the bureau of the Director, Dr. H. H. Juynboll. These instruments, Dr. Snouck Hurgronje informs me, were not collected by himself personally, but by a Jidda friend who, unfortunately, omitted to supply the requisite data for scientific registering. Even their names are denied us. Yet with the help of the donor, both by conversations and correspondence, and the courtesy of the Director of the Museum, the present writer is able to submit an account of these instruments, which comprise a lute, two viols, three rustic reed-pipes, an oboe, a flute, and a tambourine.

Precious building materials have always been used over and over again — the spoils of the architectural war. A section of the Colosseum is now the Palazzo Farnese and the Church of the Wisdom of God in the respectable Surrey town of Kingswood harbours capitals from Ephesus, the Studion, and the Myrelaion in Istanbul, besides a quantity of Byzantine marble. Precious marbles were transported far and wide by sea and, although it is not surprising that porphyry from the Red Sea coast of Egypt is used in the Pantheon, it is interesting that Giallo Antico from Algeria or Tunisia and Pavonazzetto from Phrygia which decorated, for example, the Basilica Julia in Rome have been found at provincial Colchester.

The French translators of the “Meadowa of Gold and Mines of Gems,” by the Arabian traveller and writer Mes ūdiyy, who composed this book in A.H. 332 (A.D. 943), refer their readers, in their general index, from the name of Zebbā'u, which they have unaccountably transliterated as “Zibba,” to “Zenobie,” though they never once use this latter name in the eighteen pages (vol. iii. pp. 181–198) of the work devoted to the history of this princess. Neither have they said one word in their notes to that part of the volume to show how Zebbā'u may be identified with Zenobia. (But see the concluding passages to this paper on p. 596.)

In 1953 I was able to purchase an interesting late sixteenth-century Armenian manuscript written extensively on paper and beautifully illuminated and adorned with fine miniatures in colour and gold. This manuscript, now incorporated in my collection of Armenian manuscripts, contains a rare Armenian glossary with a wealth of linguistic and grammatical information and the most complete extant text of the arithmetical tables prepared originally by the great seventh-century Armenian scientist, Anania of Shirak. The part that interests us here, however, is that which depicts a number of different alphabets with the name of each letter transliterated into Armenian script. This part contains among others the alphabet of the Ałuank', the Caucasian Albanians, which, according to Koriwn, was invented by St. Mesrop, the inventor of the present Armenian and Georgian alphabets. For fifteen hundred years the information given by Koriwn remained totally uncorroborated, for not a single character was found on stone, metal, vellum, or paper that could be recognized for sure as Caucasian Albanian.

The precise meaning of this familiar title of the Buddha is still unsettled. As the word tathāgata is not used either in. the Upanishads or (so far as I am aware) in older Sanskrit writings, there exists no available evidence earlier than the Pāli Pitakas; and there its use is so common as to merit special investigation. Before submitting my own interpretation to the judgment of scholars, I propose to state the views already advanced by others, including the great scholar Buddhaghosa, and next to examine Pitaka passages in which the title tathāgata occurs.

One of the major advantages of the study of synonyms is that it provides a link between descriptive and historical linguistics. In Professor Ullmann's words: “Synonymic structure implies the formation of associative groups between senses on the ‘langue’ level. The firmness and constancy of such associations can best be gauged from the diachronistic developments which they may initiate.” Among the first words to be studied from this point of view were the Middle English adverbs which meant “swiftly” and later “immediately”. Words of this meaning are of interest also in Middle Indo-Aryan where they form a closely-knit group. This is proved by their formal as well as their semantic development.

The inscription under notice is engraved on an outcrop of the Aravallis to the south-east of Delhi in a colony now being developed on the south of Srinivasapuri, a government residential colony on the Ring Road (South). The inscription is within the village limits of Bahapur, west of the modern Kalkajee Temple.

Kanauj, the most famous of Indian cities during the period extending from the early years of the seventh to the close of the twelfth century, undoubtedly was founded in very ancient times, but when, how, or by whom it is impossible to ascertain. The city is mentioned not only in both the great epics, the existing texts of which date from many different ages, but also in the Mahābhāshya of Patañjali, which is known to have been written in or about 150 B.C. Its foundation, therefore, must be anterior to 200 B.C., but nothing more definite can be said on the subject.