According to the Breslau edition of the Nights (vol. ii, p. 11), Nûr ad-Dîn ‘Alî, after his quarrel with his brother Shams ad-Dîn Muḥammad, leaves Cairo in the morning, and arrives at Bilbais at mid-day, then at in the evening. For Macnaghten (vol. i, p. 151) reads ; but there can be no doubt that the original reading was , as will be shown. According to Breslau, Nûr ad-Dîn at sleeps in the , “ post-horse station.” Historically, a place called appears in the Mamlûk postal service as the next station north of Bilbais on the route out of Cairo, and corresponding exactly to the of the tale (e.g. Qalqashandî, ed. 1919, vol. xiv, p. 376); it was at as-Sa‘îdîya that two roads branched respectively to Damietta and Gazza.

It is well known that the Chinese have had a little organ called shêng or yü for many ages, made with bamboo pipes which are fitted with free reeds, and played by suction. The words shêng and huang, the reed, occur in the Odes which date from before 500 b.c., and are traditionally explained as referring to an instrument like that which is still in use. But attention has not, I think, been called to the fact that a reed organ from the West was brought to China in the thirteenth century, and created so much interest at the time that it was reconstructed to play the Chinese scale. Ten or twelve of these instruments seem to have been made and to have been used in the Imperial orchestra during the Yüan dynasty (1280–1368), but I cannot find that they were used after that period. Three descriptions of the Hsing lung shêng, as the organ was named, have been found in books of the fourteenth century, and translations of these are here given, with explanatory notes very kindly contributed by the Reverend Canon F. W. Galpin.

In recent years I have had occasion to examine the Dîwâns of these two Arabic poets in connexion with theses prepared by two Indian candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and it has occurred to me that a short selection of what appeared to me at the time to be the best verses of these poets might not be lacking in interest, as no translations into English of any of the poems of either have yet been published, so far as I have been able to discover. I am not unmindful of the objections made by Doctor Nicholson when I applied a similar method of selection to the works of Mutanabbi eleven years ago, but I think that they apply, if at all, only in a very limited degree to poets of the calibre of Abu Tammâm and Ibn Hânî, whom no critic would be inclined to place in the first rank. Abu Tammâm is mainly famous as an anthologist, but his original verse is of much higher quality than that of Ibn Hânî, whose fame seems to rest more on the incidental facts that he was born in Spain and that he expressed heterodox religious opinions in a very violent way than on any poetic quality. The really great poet Abu,’l ‘Alâ, al-Ma‘arrî expressed a great dislike for his verse, comparing it to wheat grains crushed in a mill, owing to the harshness of his phraseology.

In 1896 A. Querry published in the Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris (vol. ix, pp. 110–24), a short note on the dialect spoken in Nain. His materials were collected by some of his Persian friends at Tehran where they chanced to meet a Naini on his visit to the capital. Since that time nothing has appeared in the press to add to our information concerning the linguistics in that corner of Persia.

In the course of an article I published in this Journal (October, 1924) entitled ‘ Rūdakī and Pseudo-Rūdakī ’ I referred to a long qaṣīda beginning with the words ‘ mādar-i-may’, which has been commonly attributed to Rūdakī, but could not be definitely assigned to that poet until the identity of the mamdūḥ Abū Ja‘far Aḥmad b. Muḥammad had been established. Moreover, Riẓā Qulī Khān, who quotes a few verses from it, was persuaded that the poem was not the work of Rūdakī but of Qaṭrān. I pointed out that I had not found it anywhere else attributed to Qaṭrān, and that the mamdūḥ was certainly not among the patrons of this poet. Thanks to my learned friend Mīrzā Muḥammad Khān of Qazwīn, the question has now been finally disposed of, and the qaṣīda is proved beyond doubt to be the work of Rūdakī. This discovery is of the highest importance for the history of Persian literature, as the qaṣīda represents the only genuine long poem of the “ Father of Persian Poetry ” which has hitherto been found. I naturally wish to disclaim any credit for the discovery, and the notes I now give and the edition of the poem which I print below are due entirely to the learned Mirza Muhammad.

The relations between the later Śātavāhana Kings and the “ Western Satraps ” have formed the subject of many discussions already. The matter is, however, still in an unsatisfactory state. Mr. Smith's Early History of India (4th ed.), for instance, says that Nahapāna “ may be assigned approximately to the middle of the first century after Christ, or possibly earlier ” (p. 221); but this may not be done if “ it is possible that the Kshaharāta records are dated in the Śāka era (in the same way as those of the Castana line) ” (p. 232) ; and yet we are told in the same place that all the data seem to harmonize admirably. They do nothing of the kind, and it seems to be still true that “ the whole question of the history of Nahapāna and Castana, their relation to each other, and the relation of both to the Andhra power, requires careful re-examination in the light of the available inscriptions. Too much has hitherto been taken for granted ” (Rapson, JRAS., 1899, p. 376).

The copy of a new trilingual inscription of Darius on page 434 is taken from a photograph of a thin sheet of gold now in the possession of Mr. T. C. Zorab of Hamadan, who has very kindly given me permission to publish it. The tablet measures about 9 inches square, and seems to be of the same type as the foundation inscriptions on metal tablets of Warad Sin of Larsa, of Simat-Inninni, the wife of Rim-Sin, king of Larsa, of Tukulti-Ninurta I, and of Sargon II, though there is nothing in the inscription to prove that the gold tablet was actually a foundation deposit. Restorations of the text have been made from a silver tablet, a photograph of which I have been able to use owing to the kindness of Dr. Campbell Thompson.

Again the rich collection of Sumerian literary tablets, discovered at Nippur, has contributed splendid religious texts. Professor Chiera's Sumerian Religious Texts contains seventy-two plates of elegantly copied Sumerian religious and mythological documents preserved in the Nippur Collection of the Museum of Stambul, where I copied fifty-four similar tablets and a large number of incantation texts in 1913. Dr. Chiera has found in Constantinople a surprisingly large number of well-preserved tablets of most valuable contents. I confine myself here to the well-preserved six-column tablet, Ni. 2487, identical in size and material arrangement to the large epical tablet, Ni. 4561, in Philadelphia, published by the writer in Publications of the Babylonian Section, University Museum, Philadelphia, vol. x, No. 1, and re-edited in a French edition, Le Poème Sumérien du Paradis, Paris, 1919. The Nippur Collection has already contributed a large number of these fine six-column zagsal or epical texts, copied by Poebel (PBS. v) and by the writer (PBS. x, Nos. 1–3).

The nature of Akbar's arrangements for the assessment of the land revenue in the newly acquired province of Bengal is a matter of some historical importance. It concerns the eighteenth century as well as the sixteenth, for the controversies which marked the early years of British rule found common ground in the revenue roll attributed to the year 1582; and, now that the famous Fifth Report of the Select Committee of 1812 is being studied so widely in India, it is desirable to know just what Todar Mal did, and just where Grant and Shore took erroneous views regarding the nature of his action.

Whatever the author of The Music of Hindustan has to say about Oriental music, must have a certain interest if not authority, and, for that reason, his passing comments on two points raised by me, prompt me to investigate the validity of his strictures. Whether his first objection is a philological one, or whether it is musical, is not made quite clear. If it is the former, i.e. that my contention is incompetent because the Arabic word qānūn () is derived from the Greek word kanōn (κανών), then one might as reasonably suggest that the Greek word νΦθα did not “ become ” the Latin naphtha, because the ancient Semites had the word (Arabic ) long before. If, however, the objection is directed against the instrument itself, it is evident that we ought to inquire into the precise structure of the Greek instrument called the kanōn.

Historians are agreed as to the importance of the fiscal institutions established in Upper India by Sher Shah (1540–1545), but their precise nature is not easy to discover. The difficulty lies mainly in the authorities available. All the published chronicles of the Afghan kingdom derive in effect from the Tārīkh-i Sher Shāhī of Abbās Sarwānī, and the text of this writer has not yet been worked out from the discordant manuscripts which have survived, so that it is not possible to be certain what the chronicler actually wrote in the few and tantalising passages which he devoted to the fiscal system. The only detailed study of the subject which I have seen is contained in Professor Kalikaranjan Qanungo's monograph entitled Sher Shah, which was published in Calcutta in 1921. In what follows I shall have to question some of the Professor's conclusions regarding the fiscal system established by his hero, and it is only fair to begin by saying that my criticisms do not apply to more than a very small proportion of his work. He has not, indeed, faced the problems presented by the text of the Tārīkh, and consequently his study cannot be regarded as definitive, but in the questions of chronology, topography, and psychology which occupy most of his pages he seems to me to have exercised a generally sound judgment along with great industry, and there are not many of his conclusions from which I would dissent.

Le seul spécimen que nous possédions de la langue du pays des Mitanni est la lettre trouvée à Tell-Amarna M. Hrozný a bien reconnu, et M. Forrer l'a confiṛmé, que. la langue Harri, une des langues des inscriptions trouvées à Boghaz-Kueuï, est probablement apparentée au Mitanni; mais puisque le Harri, non plus, n'a pas été interprété jusqu' ici on en est encore à les conjectures plus ou moins vraisemblables sur la lettre en langue Mitanni, seul document d'une certaine extension, les quelques phrases en langue Harri connues jusqu'ici, n'étant guère que des formules sacerdotales, ne donnant que peu de renseignement sur la nature de la langue et le sens des mots.

El Kawâkib as Saiyâra, by Ibn Ez Zaiyât, was written in 804 a.h. = a.d. 1410, and published by the Egyptian Government Press in 1907. It is a guide in Arabic to the Qarâfa—the whole of the cemetery region situated south of the citadel of Cairo and between Fusṭâṭ and El Muqaṭṭam. Nothing appears to be recorded of the author beyond his name, but his book shows that he was well acquainted with the place himself and had studied the earlier works on the subject. Of these he names (p. 4) some thirty, of which not one appears to have survived. Several of them appear to be known only by his mention, while others are alluded to or cited by other extant authors.

The Trustees of the British Museum recently acquired two inscribed tablets, one of limestone (116662) and the other of copper (116663) which proved to be from the same foundation-deposit, and to be engraved with identical texts. The stone tablet (5 in. × 2⅞ in. × in.) is almost perfectly preserved, except for slight damage on the obverse, but the same side of the copper tablet (4¾ in. × 3 in. × ¼ in.) is rather more seriously injured by oxidization of the surface. By far the greater part of the inscription, however, can be read without difficulty in both examples, and the two together make up a complete text. For permission to publish this and the following dedications I am indebted to the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities.

It would have been better that the explanation following should have formed an introduction to the series of papers under this heading, rather than a belated interjection at or near their end. But at any rate circumstances require that the explanation should not be further delayed.

The great division of the Mongol race which passes under the generic term Kalmuck, is composed of many different tribes and subsections. The name “Kalmuck” is accidental; like many of the terms employed in connexion with Mongolian dialects and tribes, it is a Russian convention. Those Mongols who took up their abode in Europe were of the Khalimak division; this word in Russian mouths soon became Kalmuck.

This book was edited for the first time by Professor Joseph Hell of Erlangen (Leiden, 1916), and since it is one of the oldest extant treatises on the literary history of the Arabs it will always be regarded as an important source of information. Unfortunately the printed text is very incorrect and often quite unintelligible. A large number of valuable emendations have been proposed by the late Professor H. Reckendorf in his review of the book (Orientalistische Literaturzeitung for May, 1917, columns 147–152), by Mr. C. A. Storey in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for April, 1918, pp. 349–355, and by Professor G. Levi della Vida in the Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. viii, pp. 611–636 (Rome, 1920). But many passages still remain obscure, and for this reason I venture to offer the following additional suggestions. If some of my remarks have been forestalled by others, I must apologise for my inadvertence. Mere misprints and incorrect vocalisations I have not thought it worth while to mention, except where they are likely to mislead the reader.

Popular and (as attested by theory) undoubtedly old as the bhāṇa must have been, the specimens of this form of composition which have been hitherto known to exist belong to comparatively recent times. Considerable importance, therefore, attaches to the discovery and publication (1922) of four bhāṇas. under the title Caturbhāṇī, by M. Ramakrishna Kavi and S. K. Ramanatha Sastri from Śivapurī, for which great antiquity is claimed by the editors and which, whatever might be their date, are certainly older than any of the late existing specimens. The Caturbhāṇī consists of Ubhayâbhisārikā (Ubh), Padma-prābhṛtaka (Pp), Dhūrtaviṭa-saṃvāda (Dvs) and Pāda-tāḍitaka (Pt), ascribed respectively, on the authority chiefly of a traditional verse, to Vararuci. Śūdraka, Īśvaradatta and Śyāmilaka. Professor Keith, in his recently published Sanskrit Drama (p. 185, fn. 3), throws doubt on the first two ascriptions, and declares rather dogmatically that “ none of these plays need be older than a.d. 1000”.

Recent discoveries at Ur have thrown fresh light upon the Babylonian custom of burying beneath the floors of houses small figures intended to secure the houses and their occupants against sickness and evil spirits. There are texts giving instructions as to how such figures should be used, and examples of the figures themselves were already known, but now we have, to illustrate the texts, a far wider range of types and much more detailed information as to the manner of the actual ritual in connexion with them.