In the following pages I submit a translation of the Chinese inscriptions engraved on the noble bronze image or statue of the Amida Buddha, which is the glory of the Musée Cernuschi, together with some particulars descriptive and historical. I have, however, paid little attention to Buddhism, and the few explanations of Buddhist terms I offer must be regarded as merely tentative. One object of the present paper is to elicit information on the many points of interest suggested by the inscriptions from members of the Society who are versed in things Buddhist.

The four epochs into which, the political history of ancient Northern India is naturally divided are marked by four imperial dynasties — (I) the Maurya, (II) the Kusana or Kushān, (III) the Gupta, and (IV) the Rājpūt line of Harṣavardhana. The date of the Maurya, the earliest of the four dynasties, was practically determined more than a century ago by Sir William Jones, and we know that Candra Gupta Maurya, the first emperor of India, and grandfather of Aśoka, ascended the throne in or about the year b.c. 321.

I propose, in this paper, to review briefly the present stateof the question, and of the answer thereto. Within the last twenty years a great advance has been made with regard to it; and we owe this advance almost entirely to the researches of two savants, Hofraths Dr. J. Wiesner and Dr. J. Karabacek, both Professors in the University of Vienna. In the following review I shall state the results of those researches, together with such conclusions as appear to me legitimately deducible from them.

It is deeply interesting to know how men's minds worked when the world was young. And it is to Babylonia—the cradle of the human race—that we must go for some evidence of this. The low alluvial plains at the head of the Persian Gulf are covered with the remains of primitive cities, palaces, temples, and cemeteries; from one of which, fifty years ago, was disinterred the little slab of unbaked clay which is now to engage, our attention, as embodying the world's earliest known arithmetical system.

This coin belongs to Professor Gardner's class (γ), “Base silver; type, Śiva” (Brit. Mus. Oat., Greek and Scythic Kings, etc., p. 104), and to the latter of the two subdivisions into which the coins of this class naturally fall. The broad characteristics of these subdivisions are as follows:—(1) King on horseback 1.; name title trātārassa; rounded forms correct Greek: (2) king on horseback r.; name title maha(ṃ)tassa; square forms corrupted Greek. A further distinction is that, in the former, the name and all the titles of the Kharoṣṭhī inscription are in the genitive case; in the latter, the name only is in the genitive, and the titles are given in their undeclined base-form, as if they were the first part of a compound which the name was intended to complete. In the case of both, and wherever else it occurs on the coins of Gondophares, there can be no doubt that the correct title is devavrata, ‘devoted to the gods,’ and not devatrāta or devahada as hitherto read; that is to say, the third akṣara, on good specimens, seems to be undoubtedly intended for rather than for or .

Much, of what I shall say to-day will be familiar to those members of the Society who have lived in Northern India. A good deal has been written about Tulasī Dāsa, but it has always been addressed to a comparatively small audience—those directly interested in the details of modern Indian folk-religion. I therefore gladly take this opportunity of repeating on a larger stage what has been said before. Tulasī Dāsa is surely deserving of more notice than is usually bestowed upon him in histories of the development of the religious idea in India. He was not merely a reformer who stirred the emotions of his contemporaries and then went his way. He wields greater influence at the present day than when he died two centuries ago. Modern Hinduism has many forms and many beliefs, and yet the character of every Hindu of Upper India has been moulded in part by his teaching.

The two principal terms of lineal measure adopted by Fa-hian, Yuan Chwang, and other Chinese pilgrims, in their narratives of the different countries in India and on its frontiers, are the yojana and the li.

For the right understanding of Alexander's Indian campaign it is essential to place correctly the nations called Malloi, Kathaioi, and Oxydrakai by Arrian, who were among the most formidable opponents of the invader. Mr. McCrindle, in his valuable work, “The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great” (new ed., 1896), seems to me to have gone wrong in this matter, and to have seriously misplaced all three nations. He has located the Malloi about one degree of latitude too far south, and, with respect to the Oxydrakai, his error, in my judgment, amounts to about three degrees. He has also failed to indicate correctly the position of the Kathaioi. I propose in this paper to examine all the evidence on the subject, and to try to establish the true approximate positions of the three nations on the map of ancient India.

Among the treasures brought to light by Dr. Stein in his excavations in Chinese Turkestan and lodged by him last summer in the British Museum, not the least interesting was a collection of fragmentary Tibetan manuscripts. These were found in the ruins of a Buddhist shrine buried in a site beyond the Endere stream, at the extreme eastern limit of the region explored, under circumstances which have already been detailed in Dr. Stein's “Preliminary Report,” pp. 55—56. It suffices here to say that the conditions under which the fragments were discovered were such as to make it practically impossible to date them later than the eighth century; and the evidence of a Chinese sgraffito in the same building has since proved this conclusion to be right. Hence they came to us as the earliest known relics of Tibetan literature.

At the hāvan ratu (the hāvan prayer-time) [the hāvan gāh] Haoma came to Zartūšt (Zaraθuštra) (2) when he was cleaning around the fire, when he wished to wash the fireplace and when he was intoning the Gāθas [when he uttered the ašem vōhu which is thrice said, and which is before the fravarānih (? i.e. the fravarānẹ)].

This poem is contained along with certain other stotras in one of the Nepalese MSS. presented by the late B. H. Hodgson to the Library of the India Office (I.O., 2921). A second copy is included in the collection of the Bengal Asiatic Society, and its initial verses are quoted by Rājendra Lāla Mitra in his account of the MS. A third copy is among the works presented to Burnouf, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Although the religion founded by Mohammed is called by strangers after his name, its followers designate it differently. There is indeed a name which rarely occurs, ḥammādūna, which is applied to them, and which indirectly, at least, is connected with the name of the Prophet. That word signifies “Those who utter the formula ‘Praise be to God,’” and this formula (al-ḥamdu lillāhi) has some connection with the Prophet's name, which was interpreted by his contemporaries as ‘the greatly to be praised.’

I am indebted to Saiyid ‘Alī Bilgrāmī Shamsu'l-Ulama for a perusal of this MS. It was purchased by him in Haidarabad.

The MS. is truly remarkable, for it is a brouillon, or roughdraught, of the first volume of the Akbarnāma. It originally wanted many passages which occur in the Bib. Ind. and Lucknow editions, but most, if not all of them, have been supplied by two or more collators. They seem to have gone carefully through the MS. and compared it with some MS. of the finished work, and they have made numerous additions and omissions so as to bring it into accord with the latter. Where the additions are of some length they are inserted in the margin, and when they consist of only a word or two they are interlined. Some of the additions are verse, and this may remind us of Abul Faẓl's statement in the 'Aīn (Jarrett, iii, p. 415) that he inserted verses on the fifth revision. Perhaps only in two instances, viz., at p. 242, corresponding to p. 246 Bib. Ind. ed., which is the chapter describing Akbar's circumcision, and at p. 346 = Bib. Ind. 349, has a verse originally omitted been inserted in the body of the text, in a blank space left for the purpose. All the other missing verses are, I think, inserted in the margin.

In 1705 there appeared at Paris a work entitled “Histoire générale de l'empire mogol depuis sa fondation, sur les Mémoires portugais de M. Manouchi, Venitien” (4to, pp. 272, also in 12mo, 2 vols.), by Father Fran¸is Catrou, of the Company of Jésus. The narrative breaks off at the end of the war of succession between Aurangzeb and his brothers (1658–9). In 1715 the same writer supplemented the above work by bringing out what he calls a Third Part (4to, pp. 107), inwhich he continues the story to the year 1707 and the battle near Agrah between two sons of Aurangzeb. Besides the Hague editions in 1708 of the French text of 1705, English translations of it appeared in 1708, 1722 (second edition), and 1826 (a new translation); and an Italian version was published at Venice in 1731. Neither in English nor Italian is there any edition of the continuation published by Catrou in 1715.

It is a matter for some surprise, that, of the scholars who have been engaged in public in the attempt to settle the date of Kanishka, none should have noticed the existence of a member of his dynasty who ought to have been recognised at least eight years ago. The case is as follows.

(1) Hence backward (or ‘after’) away from here they fly:— hence the daēva Demons and the daēva's friend, [and the daēva-worshipper]!

(2); and he who is the good Srōš makes (here) his dwelling; [that is to say, for him there becomes a lodging here].

Some twelve miles east of the junction of the Sawān with the Indus, between Makhad and Kālābāgh, and about three miles due south of the village of Shāh Muhammad Wālī in the north-west corner of the Jhelum (Jehlam) district, is an old temple called Kālar or Sassī dā Kallara, which has hitherto escaped notice. It is situated at a height of about 1,100 feet above sea-level, on the edge of a hillock rising steeply from the bank of the Kas Letī, one of the torrents, tributary to the Sawān stream, which descend from the northern face of the Salt Range; it here passes through a rough tract of hillocks and ravines. The temple is in a ruinous condition, due largely to the gradual wearing away of the soft sandstone hillside on the edge of which it stands, and its further decay will probably be rapid.

The following narrative is derived from a MS. of the History of Mayyāfāriqin by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqi, B.M. Or. 5,803, of which I have already given some account; see J.R.A.S., 1902, p. 785.

The early Persian document written in Hebrew characters which Professor D. S. Margoliouth has at my request kindly undertaken to publish, and of which his present ṗaper is intended to furnish a preliminary account, was obtained by me in the course of my journey of archaeological exploration in Chinese Turkestan carried out during 1900–1, under the orders of the Government of India.

The Chinese pilgrims tell us that a stūpa was erected over the “relics of the entire body” of Kāśyapa Buddha at a place which Fa-hian names To-wai, and locates 50 li to the west, or according to Yuan Chwang, who does not name the town, at a distance of 16 li (the Life gives 60 li) to the north-west, of SravastI city. Both pilgrims, therefore, agree in placing the stūpa of Kāśyapa Buddha to the westward of Śrāvastī city.