It may safely be said that every one who has had to do with technical Arabic has had difficulty with wahm and its cognates. Some recent investigations have led me to examine the meanings of these in detail and I endeavour in this paper to give my results. It will be understood that this is not a complete lexicographical handling of the whole root, but only an attempt to discover the more technical uses of some of its phases. In the arrangement of the material I fear that I have not always avoided logical cross-division; but the subject is complicated and will call for reading backward as well as forward. Also I make no attempt to trace the origin of these Arabic psychological conceptions, whether in Greek, Syriac, or elsewhere, or to compare them with any parallel conceptions in modern psychology. Such few references as I may make, of the one kind or the other, are simply to illumine wahm itself.

Of the many questions connected with the history of the Tughluq dynasty of Dihlī which have not been thoroughly investigated or conclusively determined I propose to deal in this paper with five, viz. :—

1. The name of the dynasty.

Free intercourse with Malabar was long denied to the rest of Southern India by the formidable natural obstacle of the Western Ghats with their impenetrable fastnesses and few passes. Owing chiefly to this circumstance that part of the country remained to a great extent isolated and secure from frequent invasions by other southern powers. This isolation, coupled with the conservative nature of the people of this tract, accounts for the preservation intact of several ancient customs of the Indians. Even in later times, whenever there had been any general disaster affecting the whole of the Dekhan, such as an invasion by the Muhammadan kings of the Khilji and Taghlak lines, the west coast afforded a safe asylum to the rest of the south. There is nothing unnatural in the following exclamation of the poet-composer of the Tiruvālaṅgāḍu plates of the eleventh century a.d.:—

“Excepting Paramēśvara, who else in this world could contemplate even in mind the humiliation of that country which is protected by the glory of the crest jewel of the Bhrgu race (i.e. Paraśu-Rāma) and the austerities of its chiefs, and which had not been injured by enemies.”

In continuation of my previous notes on the Portuguese in India and Arabia, I propose to deal with three Muhammedan chiefs who played an important part in the history of the Portuguese between the years 1517 and 1538, namely:—

1. Salmán Ra'ís.

2. Sulaymán Pasha al-Khádim, Governor of Cairo.

3. Khwája Ṣafar, Khudáwand Khán.

I am glad my paper in the Journal for April, 1920, on the above subject has drawn from Sir George Grierson and Mr. Sītā Rām their interesting articles in the October and April numbers.

The Land-revenue system described in the Āīn-i-Akbari differs widely from that which British administrators took over in the eighteenth century, and students of history or economics require to know when and how the changes took place. I cannot find any literature dealing with this subject, and I attempt in this paper to estimate the changes which took place during the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan.

The publication in two volumes by the “ Text and Translation Society ” of S. Ephraim's Prose Refutation of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaiṣān (1912–21) is an event in Syriac literature. Ephrem is the greatest Father of all the Syrian churches, and these two volumes contain, from the point of view of a modern scholar and theologian, the cream of his polemical writings. It was only two years ago that the Pope, as head of the Catholic Church, promoted the “ Edessene Deacon ” to the rank of a Doctor of the Universal Church, i.e. for all practical purposes, to the rank of a Thomas Aquinas.

Among the Boghaz Keui tablets is one which, though terribly mutilated, is of considerable interest. It is the story of the war between the gods and the Serpent of Evil told from the Hittite point of view and connected with the institution of the festival of Purulliyas. The original text has been published in the Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi, iii, No. 7.

In Part III of last year's JRAS. (pp. 319–24), Mr. Ramā Prasād Chanda has well summed up the controversy regarding Sir John Marshall's explanation of the word ayasa in the Taxila silver-scroll inscription recently discovered by that eminent archæologist. Mr. Chanda has, however, in his defence of Sir John, put forward arguments which, I submit, are far from convincing. I propose, therefore, to examine them in the following note.

On p. 174 of the late Dr. King's History of Sumer and Akkad there is reproduced the design of a cylinder seal of Lugalanda, the patesi of Lagash. In his chronological list in Appendix II to this volume, Dr. King gives the date of Lugalanda as circa 2850 b.c. In the centre of the seal design will be noted a curious geometrical pattern, to which the following reference is made on p. 176:— “Another peculiarity which may here be referred to is the employment on the larger seal, below the inscription, of a sort of arabesque pattern, an ingenious and symmetrical combination of straight lines and curves, the course of which may be followed without once passing along the same line a second time.”

Professor Turner, in his valuable articles on Gujarātī Phonology, refers to what he terms “ Spontaneous Nasalization ”. In regard to Gujarātī he says (JRAS., 1921, p. 344) “ there seems from the earliest times to have been a tendency to pronounce vowels with the velum incompletely raised, which results in the vowel becoming nasalized ”. Similarly, Professor Bloch (La Formation de la Langue Marathe, § 70) says “ Toute voyelle longue tend à développer une résonance nasale ” and he discusses this question at greater length in his article on “ La Nasalité en Indo-Aryan ” on pp. 61 ff. of the Cinquantenaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études.

The allocation of its proper place among Iranian languages to Kurmanji (Kurdish) has been rendered well-nigh impossible up to the present by the lack of material available for examination. The most careful Orientalists tend to consider it a non-Persian language, notably Justi, Darmesteter, and Socin (in the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie). The first emphatically states that it is in no way a degraded New Persian, and that a description of the peculiarities of Iranian speech would not be exhaustive if the phonetics and etymology of Kurdish be disregarded.

The founder of the third dynasty of Ur has long been known by the name of Ur-Engur. This has been regarded as an improved reading for Ur-Gur, a form which was once generally used by Assyriologists. The change was made when the publication of fresh material revealed that the sign was pronounced engur by the Sumerians. It is not difficult to show that gur is untenable, for this value seems to have been inferred from a fragment of a god-list, K. 4366 (published inCuneiform Texts, pt. xxv, pl. 48, 1. 3), which has:—

The dominating factor in the China trade for over two centuries was the problem of “laying down the dollar”. The dollar was not the currency of China; but during those two centuries—positively to 1834, and practically to 1857— it was the token by which the pound sterling and the woollen cloths of England were converted into the taels of silver and the silks and teas of China; and on the answer to the question whether the dollar delivered to the Company's treasury at Canton had cost to lay down four shillings, or five, or six, might depend the degree of profit on the round voyage.

Since the publication of these three important collections of ancient Arabic poetry, I have had access to two valuable old works dealing with the older period of Arabic poetry, viz. the second volume of Ibn Qutaiba's Kitāb al-Ma'ānī (India Office, No. 1155) and the Ḥamāsa of Hibat Allāh Ibn ash-Shaǧarī (Paris: Arabe No. 6018), the latter in photographs belonging to Mr. Storey.

There are the same recognized rules for the decipherment of an unknown script as there are for that of an ordinary cipher, and if they can be followed the script can be deciphered with as much ease as the cipher. Sometimes they cannot be followed, sufficient materials being absent; in this case, all we can do is to wait patiently until the materials are forthcoming.

Our knowledge of ornamental Kufic inscriptions is chiefly based on the materials which have been found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Upper Mesopotamia. Although they are fairly numerous, a comparative study of the origin and general development of the different types of Kufic writing is not yet possible. Such a work would have to include the countries further East, and unfortunately they have not been thoroughly explored hitherto. But the few landmarks we possess show clearly that the outlying Eastern provinces produced a greater variety of decorative inscriptions than the West ever did.

That “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”, Rudyard Kipling has impressed on us, and the dictum is widely accepted as an article of popular faith. But as an axiom it is not be to pressed without certain qualifications.

Beyond doubt there prevail certain antipathies, dissympathies, and as it were static estṛangements of populations, deeply rooted in racial sub-consciousness, but capable of becoming profoundly dynamic under appropriate stimulation and appeal.

The following notes are intended to supplement an article written in 1912 and published in JRAS. for October, 1916, pp. 773–807. The theme then was the tradition of the group as generally accepted at the present day, and limitation of space confined the study to one hero-tale for each of the Eight. The tales were translated intact from an illustrated compilation of Taoist mythology which continues in popular favour and provides a fairly representative treatment of the subject. With a scope so restricted, the former article made but a small contribution towards a better understanding of an important national cult. It is essayed here to probe a little deeper and in more varied places in search of evidence about the origin and evolution of the conception. The writer feels that apologies are due for the scrappy nature of these notes rather than for reverting to the topic ; for surely there is call for much fuller inquiry, considering the ubiquity of the Eight in the folk-lore and folk-art of the Far East during many centuries, and the scant, attention paid them by Western students.