The letter which is about to be read, not having been prepared for submission to the Society, may require a few introductory explanations.

Bámíán, a site of considerable fame in the travels and expeditions of the last sixty or seventy years, stands at a height of some 8500 feet, in a valley of the region occupied by Hazára tribes, on the chief road between Kabul and Turkestan, and almost close to the northern base of that part of the Indian Caucasus which is known, from one of its prominent peaks, as Koh-i-bábá.

Sir Henry Rawlinson has drawn attention to the mention of the ships of Ur in early inscriptions, and the connection of these very ancient vessels with those of Ethiopia. The Babylonian traders at a very remote period voyaged to India and Africa for gold and other articles to use in the arts and to supply the demand of markets. The Euphrates' banks were the ancient quays at which the primitive navigators loaded and unloaded their vessels. They proceeded by the Persian Gulf into the ocean, and there they were guided by landmarks and by the heavenly bodies. These voyages may have continued from the time when Ur was a great city, B.C. 2300, down to the period of the Persian empire, when Babylon began to decline. During all this period, as afterwards, the navigators of the Indian Ocean, whether Babylonian, Arabian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, were trading, aided by the monsoons, along the African and Asiatic coasts, and conveying knowledge from one country to another.

The recent annexation of Upper Burmah will probably give an impulse to the study of Buddhism. At any rate, the fact that the sacred books of the Southern Buddhists are beingmade accessible through Professor Oldenberg's edition of the Vinaya-piṭaka,—through the works of Professor Rhys Davids and other scholars,—and more especially through the valuable publications of the Pāli Text Society, is likely, I hope, to cause a considerable accession to the ranks of Pāli scholars.

Hitherto China has yielded few sculptured figures which can be regarded as of importance by students of comparative archæology. More than usual interest therefore attaches to a set of engravings collected in a Chinese work entitled Shih Soh (1806), in which are represented a series of sculptures which stand on the walls of the sacrificial temple of the Wu family in the neighbourhood of the district city of Kia-seang in the province of Shan-tung. These works of art were executed in A.D. 147, at the cost of the two sons of Wu Liang, whose sacrificial temple they were intended permanently to adorn.

The Buddhist legend of Jîmûtavâhana is related twice in the Kathâ Sarit Sâgara, in the 22nd Tarânga, from which the following translation is made, as well as in the 90th Tarânga. The two versions of the legend differ somewhat in their treatment of the story, the latter version giving a fuller account of Jîmûtavâhana's courtship and home-life, at the same time omitting all account of his actions in a former birth, and their results. The legend has also been dramatised in the Nâgânanda, or Joy of the Snake World, a highly sensational drama, remarkable as being the only known existing drama commencing with an invocation to Buddha. The drama follows the lines of the legend as laid down in Tarânga 90.

My tour really commenced at La Calle. I proceeded thither by the ordinary land route, and arrived at Bone just in time to catch the Tunis steamer, which left on the 6th April. It was perfectly calm when the vessel left, but after we had been an hour at sea the sirocco, which had been blowing, was suddenly succeeded by a strong north-west gale, and when we arrived off the port, two hours later, we had the greatest difficulty in landing.

Of all the known languages of the world, Sumerian may undoubtedly be regarded as the oldest. We possess now inscriptions (e.g. of the ancient Chaldean King Ur-ģanna of Sigrulla) which are of an even earlier date than the timeof the half-mythical Egyptian King Menes. Our sources for the knowledge of this language—the language of the founders of the Babylonian civilization—are twofold, namely: a long series of bilingual incantations, hymns, psalms, etc., preserved in late copies, giving the original text, line for line, with its Semitic (Babylonian or Assyrian) translation; and a great many inscriptions, in Sumerian only, of the early kings, most of them very short, but some of considerable length.

The mosque of Sultan Nasir ebn Kalaoun, which stands at the centre of Cairo citadel, although one of the most interesting in the city, seems to have received less attention than it deserves. This is probably due to the fact that, for many years past, it has ceased to be used as a mosque, and has been thrown into the background by the great Mosque of Mohamed Ali Pasha, which is visited by at least a thousand persons for every one who takes the trouble to enter the old royal mosque of the citadel.

If this paper were the first on African questions read before the Royal Asiatic Society, I should have to apologize for trespassing, but as our learned Honorary Secretary, Mr. Robert Oust, noticed,1 there is no African Society, and the Royal Asiatic Society has liberally opened its door to those who may bring information about the mysterious continent. For some time Africa has attracted so much attention that the Society in thus acting has been true to its scientific mission, and its Transactions contain already several most important papers on this interesting quarter of the globe.

The writer of this communication is the son of H. C. Von der Gabelentz; and is, like his distinguished father was before him, one of the most remarkable Linguistic Scholars of his time. He treats of a subject which is of the greatest importance, and which has this year been brought prominently to the notice of scholars by the Comparative Grammar of the Melanesian Languages compiled by the Rev. R. H. Codrington of the Melanesian Mission, and published by the Clarendon Press.

In his “Tree and Serpent Worship,” our late honoured Vice-President, James Fergusson, called attention to the similarity observable between certain symbols found on the Buddhist Topes of Sāñchi and Amarāvati, and others found on sculptured buildings and coins of Western Asia and Eastern Europe; and in doing so he expressed a hope that this subject would be taken up and developed by other writers. Discussing the origin of the object known as the triśula he said, “It is curiously like the sign of the planet Mercury, or the caduceus of the god of that name; and, if it were not rank heresy even to hint at such a thing, I would venture to suggest that, after all, there may be some connexion between at least the symbolism of the East and West.”

The task to which I address myself in this paper is the geographical distribution of the Túrki languages. But before doing so it might be well to glance at the whole Ugro-Altaïc family, in order to determine the position of the Túrki Branch in this great division of the languages of the human race.

Broadly speaking, but with sufficient accuracy, the Ugro-Altaïc languages are spoken over a region extending through more than 100 degrees of longitude, from the shores of the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China and the plateau of Tibet, and through 35 degrees of latitude, from the frozen steppes of Samoyéd and Yakút to the plains of Northern Persia and the head-waters of the Indus.

The following particulars on the origin and early history of the Banu ‘Oḳayl are from Ibn Khaldūn, vol. ii. p. 312, vol. vi. p. 11, etc. (Bulak Edition).

I may perhaps allow myself to begin by reminding the reader that Eastern writers invariably represent the Ismailian Arabs as the posterity of ‘Adnan, descendant of Ismail, and the people of each tribe as the actual children of one or other of the Arab Patriarch's posterity, after each of whom the tribe is usually named. But it is obviously unnecessary, to say the least of it, to regard the genealogies attributed to the tribes as anything more than the real or reputed pedigrees of their chiefs.

A Former number of this Journal (Vol. XIX. Part 2) contained a short account of the three monumental gates of Cairo, the chief, indeed almost the only, remaining memorials of the celebrated Fatimite Khalifate of Egypt. It included a copy of the Cufic inscription sculptured on the frieze of the gate, known by the name of Bab en Nasr, as far as I had then succeeded in reading it.

But a few Persians have devoted so much time, energy, and real enthusiasm to their own literature during the present century as the subject of this notice: the Amíru-sh-Shu'ará Rizâ Kulî Khán B Muhammad Hádí Khan B Ism'aíl Kamál, poetically surnamed “Hidáiyat,” and popularly known as the “Lalah Báshi.” Descended in a direct line from the well-known poet, Kamál Khojandí—a cotemporary of Háfiz, who died at Tabríz in A.H. 792 (A.D. 1389)— the Amíru-sh-Shu'ará was born in Tehrán on the loth Muharram, A.H. 1215 (8th June, 1800). His family, in honour of their ancestor, appended the surname Kamál to their individual appellations. Hidáiyat's grandfather, Ism'aíl Kamal, suffered death at the hands of Zakí Khán Zand for refusing to take up the cause of the Zand dynasty in preference to that of the Pretender Aghá Muhammad Khán Kajár.

Assyriology offers such a vast field still unexplored that it is hardly possible to open a new tract without falling on some unexpected discovery. That is how, studying Babylonian astronomy, a subject so difficult that few scholars have ventured to take it, I arrived, after many doubts and hesitations, at the conclusion that, when the Akkadians appeared in Mesopotamia, the country was already occupied by a Semitic population possessing a certain degree of civilization and the art of writing.

Muâwiya, the sixth Khalif in succession after Muhammad, was the first of the fourteen Khalifs of the family which presided during a period of nearly a century over the destinies of the Saracenic Empire. His father, Abu-Sufian, was of the tribe of the Kuraish, a tribe to which Muhammad also belonged. Muawiya and his wife became followers of the Prophet on the same day as that on which the father of the former, who had previously commanded the forces of the enemy, announced his adherence to the new religion.

The Hebrews came in contact principally with two great nations of antiquity, the Egyptians and the Persians; at least it is with them mainly, if not solely, that their literature has preserved any traces of connection: and these traces are chiefly to be found in the books of Moses and in the books of Daniel, Ezra and Esther. As the Persian rule of Babylon did not begin till 536 B.C., one would suppose that the records of the earlier reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar would not supply us with any words of Aryan derivation or connection, and this is undoubtedly a difficulty, as it is for many of the words we meet with in these records that such derivation has been suggested, or any such connection supposed.

Exactly two years ago it was my good fortune to lay before this Society my discovery of the system on which the hymns of the Rig-Veda were arranged,—a discovery of the highest interest to the student of the Vedas, not only by throwing unexpected light on ancient philosophical theology; but by giving back to the world the Liturgy of the ancient Brahmans,—all knowledge of the true character of which had been lost, even in India itself, for about 3000 years. Again I appear before you in the character of Veda-Vyasa, in order to lay before you the system on which the hymns of the Adi Granth are arranged.

Encouraged by the reception of my former paper on Bihārī Folk-Songs, I now lay before the Society a further set of similar ones, in the same dialect of the Bihārī language,— the Bhoj'pūrī.