An Oriental Congress at Moscow seemed to provide a very suitable occasion on which to call the attention of Western scholars to some recent important discoveries by Soviet archæologists, and at the same time to suggest to Soviet scholars a new interpretation of some of their finds.

Although Arnold J. Toynbee's reputation as a historian does not depend on his Turkic studies, yet they are an integral part of his work as a whole. Early in his career he devoted three books to the subject; and throughout A Study of History —the definitive statement of his historical philosophy—Toynbee gives considerable thought to the significance of the Turks in the Near and Middle East, according to his more general interpretation of history.

This is a preliminary account of Abu'l-Qāsim al-Bustī's refutation of Ismā'īlism with what information is available about the author as a background.

The Mingana Collection of Oriental MSS., in the Selly Oak Colleges Library, consists of some 2,700 items purchased and brought to Birmingham by the late Dr. Mingana.

A few lines are devoted to this author and his only work, the Javāhiru'l-akhbār, in 'Othmānli Mü'ellifleri (i, p. 145) where his full name appears as Qāsim b. Shaikh İlyās b. İdrīs el-Antākī. He is stated to have been one of the descendants of ‘Abdu’l-Qādir Gīlānī, to have settled at İnegöl and to have died in 941/1534–5. Bursah Meḥxmed Ṭāhir saw at İnegöl the metrical composition (manẓūme) written in 901/1496–7 by Qāsim Efendi entitled Javāhiru'l-akhbār. This, he says, is divided into thirty-two bāb and is an ethical and Ṣūfī work. The note on Qāsim concludes with some mention of the Shaikhs who succeeded him but the dervish order to which they belonged is not stated.

A stone inscription was discovered in 1898 at Mewasa, a village in Cutch, by Diwan Bahadur Ranchodbhai Udayaram of Bombay. The epigraph was noticed by V. G. Trivedi and D. B. Diskalkar in the Annual Report of Watson Museum of Antiquities, Rajkot, 1923–24, pp. 4, 12–13. Diskalkar's reading and interpretations of the text were also published in the Proceedings of the Fifth Indian Oriental Conference, vol. i, p, 1928, pp. 565 ff. But his interpretations leave room for improvement, and as the record has so far failed to draw sufficient attention of scholars, I venture to make some observations based on Diskalkar's reading of the text.

One of the major advantages of the study of synonyms is that it provides a link between descriptive and historical linguistics. In Professor Ullmann's words: “Synonymic structure implies the formation of associative groups between senses on the ‘langue’ level. The firmness and constancy of such associations can best be gauged from the diachronistic developments which they may initiate.” Among the first words to be studied from this point of view were the Middle English adverbs which meant “swiftly” and later “immediately”. Words of this meaning are of interest also in Middle Indo-Aryan where they form a closely-knit group. This is proved by their formal as well as their semantic development.