I HAVE been asked by Āḷkoṇḍavilli Govindācārya Swāmī to offer the following pages to the Royal Asiatic Society. The Artha-pañcaka, written in Tamil in the thirteenth century a.d. by the celebrated Piḷḷai Lōkācārya, is quite the most important summary of the modern Bhāgavata doctrine of Southern India that we possess. A Sanskrit translation of this work by Nārāyana Yati was noticed, and its contents partly described, by Dr. Bhandarkar at the Vienna Oriental Congress of 1886 (Aryan Section, Proceedings, p. 101), and the information is repeated by him in his Report on the Search for Sanskrit MSS. in the Bombay Presidency during the year 1883–4, published in 1887 (pp. 68, 69). It is upon this work, and upon another (the Yatīndra-mata-dīpikā of Śrī-nivāsa) described at the same time, that Dr. Bhandarkar founded his well-known account of the origin of the Bhāgavata religion, which has formed the basis of all researches into the subject conducted since then in Europe.

The poet now offers reverence to the forty-two Harivallabhas, who were specially dear to the Lord In the text I have numbered these for convenience of reference.

QURAIŠ had not been distinguished for great poets in the time of paganism, but during the first century after the Hijra they boasted of the following five: 'Umar b. Abī Rabī'a, al-Ḥārith b. Ḫālid al-Maḫzūmī, al-'ArǦī, Abū Dahbal al-ǧumaḥī, and Ibn Qais ar-Ruqayyāt. Of the first and last named we possess excellent editions; I give here the text of what remains of Abū. Dahbal, while of the other two we have scattered in the Kitāb al-Aġānī and elsewhere a fair number of poems to give us an opportunity of comparing the style of their poetry with that of the poets of other Arab tribes. A lighter vein appears to pervade all these poems; a large predominance is given to the shorter metres, and the poems also are as a rule shorter than the lengthy qaṣīdas of poets from other tribes. As might be expected, the descriptions of the desert and its typical animals and phenomena are practically lacking. These men were born and brought up in towns; how could they share the ideas of the Bedouin Arab roving through the wide country?

The subject that I venture to discuss in this paper is one that may seem surprising and even fantastic, and yet, if any orderliness can be introduced into the earliest Indian ages, it can only be attained by examining and co-ordinating all the genealogical and quasi-historical data which have been handed down in Sanskrit books. The subject has been before my mind for many years, and it has been only after long consideration of all the relevant information, which I have been able to collect out of all those books, especially the Epics and Purāṇas, that it has seemed to me some measure of order may be educed out of the chaos of material. That information is condensed in the following pages, and no statement is made without citing the authorities that support it. I may say that the conclusions set out here were not reached from any preconceived ideas, except this one (if it merits that description), that the ancient kṣatriya literature deserves to be examined from a common-sense point of view on the supposition that it may contain genuine tradition, however much distorted in the course of time. It was only after investigating the subject piecemeal, following each detail into other details to which it led and continually rearranging them as their number and mutual relations developed, that something definite seemed at first to emerge out of the chaos, and then gradually the subject seemed to shape itself into some degree of order. Even if my views should not commend themselves to others, yet the material collected here and the method of treatment may, I hope, be of some service to others in elucidating the subject.

THE Instructions of the Second Caliph to the Judge Abū Mūsā al-Ash'arī are edited by several Moslem writers, with the differences which seem inseparable from Oral Tradition. The earliest existing copies are those produced by Jāḥiẓ (ob. 255 a.h.: Bayān, i, 169, ed. Cairo), by Mubarrad (210–85: Kāmil, i, 9, ed. Cairo), and Ibn Ḳutaibah (213–76: 'Uyūn al-akhbār, p. 87, ed. Brockelmann); to the next century belongs that of Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (246–328: 'Iḳd Farīd, i, 33, ed. Cairo, 1293); to the same century or the next belongs the edition of Māwardī (362–450: Aḥkām Sulṭaniyyah, pp. 119–21, ed. Enger); and to a much later period that of Ibn Khaldūn (732–806: Muḳaddimah, i, 184, ed. Cairo, 1284; p. 221, ed. Beyrūt, 1900). According to Mubarrad the Instructions were very widely circulated; he has glossed a few of the expressions, but by no means provided a complete commentary. Glosses to one or two of the phrases are to be found in the Nihāyah or “Dictionary of Tradition” of Ibn al-Athīr. The document was translated into German by von Hammer (Über dic Länderverwaltung unter dem Chalifate, Berlin, 1835, pp. 206, 207) after Ibn Khaldūn; the same text was followed by de Slane in his translation of the Prolegomena (Notices et Extraits, xix, 449), and Professor Gottheil (History of the Egyptian Ḳāḍīs, p. vii). Finally the Beyrūt editor has vocalized the whole text.

The Ahuna-Vairya was so distinguished by the later use which was made of it that it became a formula of unusual moral and ritualistic importance—indeed, more so than, upon our first glance upon it, we should, the most of us, think that it deserved. But, though bearing unmistakable traces of being somewhat artificially constructed, both in its metre and contents, upon closer study the little group of words seems well worthy of its parentage, for it is a succinct cipher of that remarkable manifestation of the moral idea which, as the one point of Zoroastrianism, must have had enormous influence during successive generations among the inhabitantsof Mid-Asia. The Pahlavi form of the name Ahunaver is but a contraction of Ahuna-Vairya, —the nasal n having intruded from thenasal m of an accusative ahūm, or else from mere euphony.

Le commandant d'Ollone a rapporté de sa dernière mission scientifique diverses inscriptions chinoises qui peuvent fournir d'utiles indications sur l'histoire des régions du sud-ouest de la Chine.

Plusieurs de ces inscriptions ont été publiées dans le Journal Asiatique de Paris de Juillet-Août, 1909, traduites et commentées par M. Chavannes, professeur au Collège de France et membre de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles lettres.

IN addition to the more or less accredited ancient Sibylline oracles, others circulated, under the name of the one or the other of the Sibyls, which also claimed to be of equal authority. The name was a recommendation for a special kind of apocalyptic literature, and the example set of old of foretelling the future was thereby continued for many centuries. The character of this Sibylline Oracle was akin to some of the old Apocalypses, in which the future was revealed in a symbolical form, and the events to come foretold by allegories and signs, which were interpreted by the Sibyl as by one of the prophets of old. By connecting such apocalyptic revelations with some ancient name and ascribing to men or women of the past works composed at a much later time, these compositions entered into the domain of that apocryphal Christian literature which made use of old formulas for disseminating new teaching and thus prepared the mind of the people for untoward incidents. These oracles were soon drawn into the cycle of the Doomsday; the legends of Antichrist and of the Last Judgment were incorporated with the older oracle; and thus an oracle which originally may have been a mere forecast of purely political events became a religious manifesto, a prophetic pronouncement on the course of events, leading up to the final drama.

IF anything could make Sir Richard Burton turn in his grave, it would be to know that all the time he was having his unpleasantness with the authorities of the Bodleian, there reposed in that library an Arabic MS. containing the “Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. Ever since Professor Ethé made his catalogue of the additional Arabic MSS. in the Bodleian, the treasure was waiting to be lifted by anyone who should take the trouble to run over that catalogue in its still manuscript form. But it is plain that no student of the Arabian Nights had done so, until, in September of 1908, Professor Ethé's catalogue was most courteously put into my hands, and I discovered that the one of Galland's stories of which absolutely no Oriental trace had ever been found, and the possibility, even, of the existence of which, as an Oriental story, had been denied, had been lying in the Bodleian in Arabic since 1860. I had just returned from a vain search for MSS. of the Nights in Cairo, Syria, and Constantinople to make this find in Oxford.

THE lofty chain of the Western Ghats bears much the same relation to the land of Bhārgava-kṣetra, a Sanskrit name of the coastal country of Kerala or Malabar, as the gigantic Himālayan range bears to the land of Bhārata-varṣa, or the Indian continent as a whole. This huge and impervious mountain-barrier, shutting off the low-lying seaboard region from the high table-land of the Deccan behind, has made it a separate world in every respect. The face of Nature, with its luxuriant growth of palms nurtured by the abundant tropical monsoons, differs from that of any other part of the Indian Peninsula. The language, Malayālam, though a branch of Dravidian speech, is confined to this region.

When at Lhasa in 1904 I found, in addition to the two earliest historical Tibetan documents yet known (as notified inthis Journal), a very long inscription of the Chinese emperor Chia-ch'ing, of 1808 a.d., which is of considerable historical interest and importance. It gives an official account of the origin of the Grand Lamaship and of the theory of succession to the same by divine reincarnations; it also prescribes the “Ordeal of the Urn” for the selection of the candidate, one of the steps taken by China to secure political control over the succession to the pontifical throne; and it records the building of the Potala palace at Lhasa as one of “the three Potalas”, and of a fourth “Potala”-academy erected by a Chinese emperor at Jehol, to the north-west of Peking.

[On p. 566 ante reference was made to the two kalās or schools of the Viśiṣtâdvaita Vaiṣṇavas—the Teṅgalai and the Vaḍagali. The points of difference in their doctrines are of considerable importance for the study of religion in India, and I have much pleasure in forwarding to the Royal Asiatic Society the enclosed communication from Swārī Gōvindâcārya, himself a follower of the Tengali belief. It may be noted that while each school has numerous adherents in Southern India, the great majority of Vaiṣṇavas of Northern India trace their spiritual descent from Rāmânanda, and profess doctrines akin to those of the Vaḍagalai.—G. A. G.]

IX. A single additional word upon the Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and Persian Commentaries is needed here.

It has been sometimes carelessly supposed that all the commentaries upon the Avesta are those which appear in the secondary stage of the Avesta language, with their Sanskrit and Persian translation, but of this Ahnnaver we have at Yasna XIX an interesting discussion of a very representative character, and in the original Avesta language, though it is not impossibly, yet I think hardly probably, a retranslation from an extinct Pahlavi original. A translation of its Avesta text into English will be found in the thirty-first volume of the Sacred Books of the East at the place designated by the page number. This text itself is actually a commentary upon the Avesta Ahunaver, but it has also—as said above—in due course, its own separate and entire (?) Pahlavi translation-text in the body of the Pahlavi Yasna, which has been edited by the present writer with all the MSS. collated, and in its deciphered form, in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band vi, a translation of it into English having followed in the JRAS.; and it—this Paldavi translation-text—has also its own Sanskrit translation in the course of Nēryōsangh's translation at the place, with its Persian translation, like those of the Gāθic Sections, which appear in my addition of the Gāthas. The treatment of their original, the Avesta-Ahuna, in both this Avesta Commentary upon the Avesta-Ahuna and in its—this Avesta Commentary's—translation into Pahlavi—always, of course, a necessary distinction—is somewhat artificial and erratic when regarded as a tentatively exact and exhaustive exposition; but it has, perhaps, all the more its own interest, in spite of that very necessary defect, if not in consequence of it, as being a fine specimen of the products of the later Sasanian schools; and, as may be seen above, it is unexpectedly important on account of some of its expressions, which have created much discussion in the matter of the history of the Christian Logos Doctrine.

THE British Museum having been fortunate enough to acquire a new historical document from Assyria of considerable importance, it has been thought that (not withstanding that an excellent translation and commentary upon it, from the pen of the copyist of the text, Mr. L. W. King, of the British Museum, has been published) a few notes concerning it would not be without interest to the readers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and more particularly those whose studies deal with the pre-Christian Semitic East, especially the tract lying north-west of the Persian Gulf.

Before proceeding to the subject-matter of this paper, I would ask leave to revert for a moment to the preceding article on the Bhāgavata system of incarnations. Several kind Bhāgavata friends have sent me criticisms on points of detail in what I then wrote, which will be utilized when opportunity occurs. I would mention one now, as it affects the question of terminology. On p. 624 I used the name Vibhu or Vibhava Avatāra as the name of one of the forms under which the Supreme manifests Himself. I can give authority for both these names from North Indian literature; but, writing from Mysore in the south, Paṇḍit Gōvindâcārya, the translator of Rāmaňuja's commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, informs me that the use of Vibhu in this connexion is incorrect. As a technical term of Bhāgavata theology, vibhu means “infinite”, in contradistinction to aṇu, “finite.” For the incarnation, vibhava is the only correct term. In this sense vibhava is explained as vividhēna bhavati, and means literally “many-becomingness”.

EIGHT years ago I had the honour of reading a paper before the Royal Asiatic Society termed “Historical Notes on South-East Persia”. In 1905 I was appointed to Khurāsān, and the following notes are the result of various tours. My thanks are due to Khan Bahadur Ahmad Din, Attaché to His Britannic Majesty's Consulate-General, for checking the various inscriptions, and, more especially, for enabling me to give the first clear and accurate account of the famous Meshed Shrine.

DURING a recent visit to Assam I made some notes on the religion of the country which may possibly prove of interest. The forms of Hinduism prevalent there merit attention for two reasons. Firstly, they present some special developments of the Vaishnava faith in which monasticism and puritanism attain a prominence unusual in contemporary India and, secondly, they illustrate clearly and compendiously the methods by which the propagation of Hinduism in areas originally not Hindu is effected. The historical record, if not ancient, is exceptionally authentic for the last few centuries, and though the Assamese sects have features of their own yet the circumstances of their rise and subdivision may throw light on what occurred elsewhere.

WHILE preparing an article on Buddhist Councils for Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, I came to identify the so-called “Five Points” of Mahādeva with some “heretical” tenets of the Kathāvatthu. If I am right in this identification, and I believe I am, the fact cannot be without importance, for it establishes a link, hitherto wanting, between the Cingalese tradition of the Third Council and the Northern traditions concerning councils and the origin of the Mahāsāṃghikas. I do not intend to draw the conclusions that can be derived therefrom, namely, as concerns the redaction of the Kathāvatthu: this book, one of the richest of Buddhist antiquity, has not yet been studied enough, and its interpretation is beset with many difficulties. Careful comparison with “Northern” documents on sects would prove very useful, and, to say the truth, much help will be derived from the forthcoming translation of the Kathāvatthu itself.

KĂNAURĪ is one of the complex pronominalized languages of the Tibeto-Burman family. It is spoken in the Sătlăj Valley in the Pănjāb, from a point about 20 miles up the river from Rāmpūr to near the Tibetan border. Băshăhr State, of which Kănaur is the eastern part, begins 50 miles east of Simla; it has an area of 3800 square miles, and a population of 84,000.

[The following article contains a revised translation of Bābar's account of Farghāna, a passage discussed and quoted by many writers on Turkistān. Some mistaken inferences have been drawn from it as it stands in the Memoirs and Mémoires, because these both lacked a pure textual basis and modern local knowledge. I regret that, obeying a Turk in his Turkī, an autobiographer in his style, my wording departs from Mr. Erskine's. The speech of some Englishmen can go straight into Turkī; out of Turkī, Bābar's should go straight into theirs. They are not schooled, nor was he. Neither blurs meaning by complex statement; neither throws “and” into the pause between two thoughts. Mr. Symonds' rule gathers force from the clearness of the mould of Turkā speech: “A good translation should resemble a plaster cast, the English being plaqué upon the original, so as to reproduce its exact form, although it cannot convey the effects of bronze or marble which belong to the material of the work of art.”]