The relations existing between China and Tibet have been for such a length of time of so intimate a nature, that, better than any other people, the Chinese are in a position to give us reliable information concerning this secluded and interesting country; for, though we possess such valuable works as Markham's Tibet, various papers by Father Desgodins, the reports of the native travellers employed by the great Trigonometrical Survey of India and those of Sarat Chandra Das, who has within the last ten years twice visited Tibet, these do not by any means cover the whole field of Tibetan geography and ethnography, and all the information we can obtain supplementing or corroborating these works must be valuable and worthy of our attention.

Formerly in the seventh year Ch'ung-tê (A.D. 1643) of the Emperor T'ai-tsung-wen, the Panch'en Erdeni, the Talé lama, and Ku-shih han (Gushi khan), knowing of the appearance of a superior man in the eastern country, sent envoys for the express purpose (of seeing him). They were only able to reach their destination by passing through hostile countries, and after several years they arrived at Sheng-ching (Mukden). This was eighty years ago. (These princes) were all alike doers of good works and liberal patrons (of the clergy), and peace and happiness reigned (in their land). But after the death of the Talé lama, the Déba kept the news hidden from Us, and for sixteen years he madly ruled according to his caprice. La-tsang put him to death, and then Religion reappeared. For this reason We acceded to the united supplications, of La-tsang and all the princes of the Kokonor when Chih-wang a-la-p'u-tan in his foolishness fomented troubles. He excited to rebellion the Chun-ko-ehr (Sungans), who committed riotous acts of open rebellion, burning down the Talé lama's (monument), level-ling to the ground the pagoda of the fifth Talé lama, polluting the Pan-ch'en, destroying the convents, and killing the lamas. Glorying in being the champion of the Faith, he was in truth but its destroyer, seeking stealthily to take for himself the country of Tibet.

From the Rājatarangmī we learn that, when Kāsyapa raised Kāshmir above the waters, Nīla, whose royal canopy was the hood of the serpent, reigned there over the Nāgas.

The Mosque of Ibn ḥūlūn was the third congregational Mosque built in the Muslim capital of Egypt. The first, originally built by 'Amr, the conqueror of the country, in a.h. 21 (a.d. 642), was re-built and extended by many governors in succession, and still remains—a monument of great historical, if of slight artistic interest. The second, known as Gāmi' al 'Askar, or the Camp Mosque, was built in a.h. 169 (a.d. ), in the military suburb which had grown up since a.h. 133 to the N.E. of the original capital. This Mosque was increased in size in a.h. 211 (a.d. ) and is heard of as late as a.h. 517 (a.d. 112¾); but all traces of it have been lost for many centuries, nor have any details come down to us with regard to its plan and architecture.

Such a cloud of mystery has from time immemorial involved the regions comprised under the somewhat vague designation of Central Asia, and so many misconceptions exist regarding that portion of them which has come under Russian rule, that it appears to me to be most desirable that any one who has visited those parts and thus had an opportunity of judging, however superficially, for himself, should do his best to convey to the public his unbiassed impressions on the subjects which have come under his notice, and this all the more that the general vagueness of the information obtainable hitherto on these points and the various misconceptions arising therefrom have formed the great obstacles to a satisfactory mutual understanding between the two great European Powers which should be working together in unison for the amelioration of the conditions of the Asiatic populations which Providence and their own individual energy and enterprise have brought under their respective rules, instead of, as has been too unfortunately the case more often hitherto, watching one another's progress with jealousy and distrust, and making use of every available opportunity of criticizing unfavourably the results, and depreciating or misrepresenting the motives of one another's policy.

A topography is a description of a country, and such a description comprises that of the land and its inhabitants; detailed and succinct descriptions are both, included in this category of works.

The mountains and rivers of Ssŭ-ch'uan are considered the finest of the Empire. Thousands of miles and more to the west of Ta-tu (‘great ford’ over the Nya-lung ch'u ?), carved, written, and chiselled records, stores of carpets, fur garments, and fine clothing are common. Although one may go far into the wilds, still everywhere exist the two vitalizing principles (of heaven and earth), their combination producing the mountains and the dissolution of the waters, occasioning such a beautiful and interchangeable whole that the benefits derived from its perfectly harmonious operation can vie with those of the golden ages.

We all know—for the Bible tells us of it—one of the chief characteristics of the Babylonians and Assyrians, namely, their superstition, as shown by their use of charms and magical formulae. Nahum calls Nineveh “the mistress of witchcraft,” who “selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.” Micah, too, speaks of the witchcrafts and soothsayers of one or both of these countries, and Isaiah mentions the multitude of Babylon's sorceries, and the great abundance of her enchantments, calling upon the multitude of the sorcerers and star-gazers to save her, if they could, from the things which were to come upon her. The great use of charms and magic is, indeed, one of the things which strikes the student who examines the literature of these two remarkable countries; for the number of documents referring to the various branches of this art—the “black art,” in fact—far exceeds that of any other branch of Babylonian or Assyrian literature. Omens, medical formulæ in mystic ideographs, and invocations in Akkadian, in Assyrian, and in the two languages together, abound. Many of these last are very elaborate, and have very interesting introductions, and almost all contain a great deal of information about the mythology and superstitions of the two nations by whom they were used.

The bird called Cātaka (Coccystes melanoleucos) is well known to naturalists iri India, as well as to students of native folklore and poetry; and I cannot introduce my remarks on its twofold character more appropriately than by quoting the following extract from a letter from Mrs. Mullens, the eminent Zenana missionary in Bengal.

We find in the Dīpavamsa (Chapter V. 39–48) a list of the eighteen sects (or schools rather) into which the Buddhists in India had, in the course of the second century of the Buddhist era, been divided. In the Mahāvamsa (Chapter V.) there is a similar list, evidently drawn from the same sources, but omitting (in Tumour's texts) numbers 1–7 of the older list. It is curious that precisely where these names ought to come in (at line 5), the text given by Tumour is evidently corrupt, a half-sloka at least being missing, and probably more.

The fame of the chüeh of the West and of the chien of the South has been transmitted through the Erh-ya. The white pheasants of Ch'i-kung, the palaces of the tributary princes, how flourishing they were! The excellence of the creation of things, of their growth and diffusion, is it not like the benevolence of the Emperor, which is as heaven and earth?

The Chih kung chih t'u contains very careful reproductions of the strange costumes of the vassal tribes which come with tribute to Court. The glory of the reigning dynasty is as great as that of Yao and Shun, and there is no locality however remote which does not seek the Sovereign-ruler's presence. The characteristics and outward appearance (of each of our tributaries) are now all well known, and fully recorded, and the descriptions are not confined to vague portraitures, and to notices on the curiosities of land and water, but set forth exactly the produces of the soil.

Though declining to pronounce on the origin and history of the fables of “Barlaam and Joasaph” until the Buddhist Játakas have been translated from the Pali, M. Zotenberg has been at pains to collect these fables and to edit them with a revised Greek text as an appendix to his “Notice sur le livre de Barlaam et Joasaph” (Paris, 1886). A translation of his text is here given; and for the convenience of students of comparative folk-lore, I have added a translation, from Boissonade's text in “Anecdota Græca,” of further passages bearing on the life of Joasaph. The passages in square brackets [ ] are those from Boissonade; the numbers at the head of the remaining sections corresponding to the numbers of the sections of M. Zotenberg's text.

The subject of the Lycian inscriptions appears to have been first brought prominently to notice by Sir Charles Fellows half a century ago. The first texts in this character were copied by Cockerell, and published in Walpole's travels. These were commented on, in 1821, by M. Saint Martin, who, judging from the bilingual in Greek and Lycian from Limyra, supposed the native version of the text to be comparable with the Syriac and Phoenician. Ten years later, in 1831, Dr. Grotefende communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society a paper, published in the third volume of the Transactions, treating of the five Lycian texts then known, and lie concluded from the declension of the verb that the Lycian must have belonged to the Aryan family of speech, and that it possessed long and short vowels as in Persian. In 1838–9 Sir C. Fellows collected copies of twenty-four Lycian inscriptions, including the great obelisk of Xanthus, on which are inscribed, in letters one and half inches long, no less than 246 lines of Lycian writing, and twelve lines of Greek hexameters. A certain number of coins of Lycian cities, with Lycian inscriptions, were also recovered, and the results published in 1840 in the volume called “ Lycia.” The copy of the great Xanthus text was however imperfect, and to this, as the most important of the Lycian monuments, Sir Charles Fellows devoted further attention, and in 1842 published a larger and very careful reproduction of the monument.

At p. 139 of the second edition of Professor Carl Faulmann's “Das Buck der Schrift” will be found a table called the “Kistna” Alphabet. It is supposed to be a special form of writing adopted on and about the Kṛishṇā River on the East coast of India, a part of the country noted for centuries as a centre of religious and secular education, and at the present day recognized as the tract where the purest form of the Telugu language is spoken. The date of the alphabet is not given, but I am prepared to prove that the table is copied from one made out by Prinsep, and published in 1837; that this was itself taken from a single inscription which, was engraved some time between the sixth and eighth or ninth centuries A.D.; and that the special forms given are erroneous and misleading, being copied, not from the original inscription, but from a drawing. In the original the drawing of the inscription itself is fairly accurate, so far as the shape of the letters is concerned, but the alphabet compiled from it by Prinsep is far from satisfactory.

In the 18th vol. of the Zeihchrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft the late Prof. Fleischer published a specimen of the Jewish Arabic Literature in the Maghreb. Considering the fearful state of oppression in which the Jews of this country live, we have, of course, not to deal with great productions, yet these pieces offer a certain philological interest and give, although the external form seems rather neglected, another proof for the assertion of the Freiherr V. Maltzan (Z. d. M. Gesell. vol. xxvii. pp. 232 ff.) that Arabic in Maghreb comes nearer to that in the Arabic mother country than the Egyptian dialect.

In the course of a first reading of Vallabhadeva's Subhā-shitāvali I came upon the following verses ascribed by Vallabhadeva to “Pāṇini.”

In the last number (vol. v. parts ii.–iv.) of the Zapiski of the Oriental Section of the Russian Archæological Society (St. Petersburg, 1891), we find an account of two stones inscribed with Chinese characters, discovered on the Upper Orkhon, near the ruins of Kara Balgassun, among a quantity of other remains, by M. Yadrintsef, during his expedition last summer in North-eastern Mongolia, and forwarded by him to St. Petersburg. Here they were carefully examined by M. E. Koch, who reports that the stones are unfortunately only fragments of a much larger monument, and that it is impossible to say whether they both formed part of the same though they were found in close juxtaposition and their contents would apparently support such a conjecture. Most of the characters are easily legible, being very similar in style to those in present use in China, but owing to the fact of the stones being of grey granite, much weatherworn in places, and the age of the inscriptions (upwards of one thousand years old), there are difficulties in deciphering them. They refer to the period of the T'ang dynasty, or, to be more precise, to the time when the Uighurs were dominant in Northern Mongolia; The characters differ in some instances from those in general use and a few are quite illegible. Where these occur dots are inserted in the text. All the lines want both beginning and end.

The following inscription, or rather group of three independent inscriptions, is on a tablet of clay numbered K 1280 in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum. The tablet measures by 2⅜ in. (Bezold, Catalogue, p. 257). The obverse contains an inscription of nine lines complete in itself, the reverse two inscriptions of three and six lines respectively, which are separated by a line of division, and a single group of three characters appears on the edge. The texts are clearly written in characters which for the most part present the Assyrian form, though some, as, for instance, zu in the first and riš in the third line of the third inscription, are purely Babylonian.