Between the north-west frontier of our Indian Empire and the Pamirs there is a tract of mountainous country inhabited by many different nationalities, speaking many different tongues. The Pāmirs themselvesare a polyglot region. Taking Zēbāk, for instance, the district round it is the home of no less than four distinct speeches— one West-Iranian, Persian, and three East-Iranian, Wakhī, Shi ghī, and Ishkāshamīī. These last belong to the same Aryan group as Paksbtō. To the south-east of the Pāmirs we come to the Burushaskī spoken in Hunza and Nagar, a language of Scythian stock, whose immediate affinities have not yet been identified. South-east, again, of the Burushaskī area we come to Bāltistān, where another Scythian language, the Tibeto-Burman Bāltī, is the vernacular. In the valley of Kāshmīr;, there is Kāshmirī, and in the lower reaches of the Jhelum and in the Murree Hills, Chhibhālī, both of which are Indo - Aryan, and can be traced up to ancient Sanskrit. West of the Chhibhālī tract lies the British district of Hazara, of which the principal language is a form of Western Panjābī. Crossing the Indus we come to the Northern Pakhtō dialect of Pakshtō spoken in Peshawar, Ṣwāt, and Bajaur. West of Bajaur, beyond the Kunar River, we come to Laghmān. North of Laghmān lies Kāfiristān, through which we again reach the Pāmirs.

Fifteen years ago I read before this Society a paper treating of “the languages of the Early Inhabitants of Mesopotamia,” in which I expressed my conviction that the non-Semitic dialects (for there are at least two closely-allied idioms) spoken in that district, revealed to us by the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, were really languages, and not cryptographies or “allographic systems of writing,” as they were called by those who favoured the theory of the artificial nature of the script employed.

In December last I received from Captain H. H. P. Deasy a small cylindrical box containing a block-print, which, as he wrote to me from Yarkand in April, 1899, he had obtained, apparently, not long previously in Khotan.

As this edition of a short section of the Pahlavi translation of the Yasna is intended to be followed by similar publications ultimately embracing the entire Pahlavi texts of the Yasna with the exception of those which have been already treated in my Five Zarathushtrian Gāthas, I make here full allusions to the MSS. which have been consulted in producing it.

With the kind permission of the Council of the Society, I purpose from time to time to contribute a series of notes on such unpublished or noteworthy coins and seals of Ancient and Mediaeval India as come under my notice; and I shall be greatly obliged to collectors of these objects if they will submit to me at the British Museum any specimens about which they may desire information.

My learned colleague and friend, Professor Rhys Davids, in the course of his recent travels in India, found at Junagadh two fragments that had broken away from the Girnar Rock. One was in the museum; the other was lying on the floor by the rock, and has now been removed to the museum. They belong to the Thirteenth Edict of Piyadasi. It will be remembered, in fact, that only a part of this tablet was found in situ. I am all the more obliged to him for the friendly confidence with which he asked me to present them to our colleagues of the Royal Asiatic Society, because, unless I am mistaken, the study of them will enable us to introduce important corrections into the reading or interpretation of several passages.

The identification of the kingdom of Kulūta, which Hiouen Thsang visited, with the present valley of Kullu seems to be quite beyond dispute; and the lapse of more than twelve centuries and a half has effected so little change in the conditions, that Hiouen Thsang's description and the acount in Hunter's Gazetteer are curiously similar. Like its neighbour the kingdom of Chamba (Skt. Caṇpakā), it belongs to the eastern or Jālandhar group of Hill States in the Panjab. At present this group consists of twelve states, but, according to Cunningham, there were formerly only four—Jālandhar, Chamba, Kullu, and Mandi. Of the first and third we have a detailed description by Hiouen Thsang, and, as will be seen (inf., p. 541), it is possible that he mentions the second under another name. In our attempts to unravel the tangle of ancient Indian geography, the untying of one knot fortunately often leads to the untying of others. The identification of the Kulūtas may enable us to identify, with a greater or less amount of certainty, other peoples who occur with them in the geographical lists. It may, therefore, serve a useful purpose, if we examine in detail all the known occurrences of the Kulūtas in literature and on inscriptions and coins.

Having procured three manuscripts of this work, I at first proposed to edit the text. But in going through the work for that purpose I soon found that Professor Kielhorn was right in supposing it to be too dependent on Sāyaṇna to deserve publication in full. Under these circumstances Professor Macdonell suggested to me that I should collect all that was of interest in the work. This I have here attempted to do.