About twelve years ago Dr. Hoernle published a series of ancient documents written in Brāhmī characters and an Iranian language. There was and is some uncertainty about the exact spot or spots where they were found. Some of them had been bought “from a Khotan trader Badruddīn, who could or would give no information”. Others were said to have been dug out from a buried town near Kuchar. The interpretation of these documents has not advanced much since they were edited, though we now know that they are written in the same tongue which is used in numerous fragments and MSS. found in Eastern Turkistan, and which has been variously designated North Aryan, East Iranian, Tokharī, and Khotanese. The alphabet in which these documents are written, on the other hand, is much better known now than twelve years ago. Dr. Hoernle has published tables found in Central Asia and containing complete alphabets, so that we are now relatively well informed about the value of the different signs. Moreover, a comparison with other manuscript finds from Turkistan has shown that some signs were not from the beginning correctly transliterated. In the present connexion it is of importance that we now know that two different signs were originally confounded and invariably transliterated ñ. One of them, however, denotes an r-sound, and is now usually transcribed rr.

To students of Buddhism and Comparative Religion desirous of knowing Buddha's own views and teaching from his own words, it is extremely disconcerting to find that the Pāli Canon can no longer be regarded as the actual “Word” and Doctrine of Buddha himself. It has been conclusively established by the researches of Kern, Minayef, Senart, Feer, Poussin, Lefmann, Winternitz, R. O. Franke, and others (including the writer) that the Pāli Canon is a mosaic of material belonging to different ages and stages in the development of Buddhism; and that the words and theories put into the mouth of Buddha therein are largely the composition of monks who lived several centuries after Buddha's death, and considerably later than was estimated by Professor H. Oldenberg. Embedded thus in this mass of heterogeneous material, with no outstanding distinctive marks, it seems almost hopeless to confidently detect and dig out therefrom the pieces containing unequivocally the true Buddha-Word.

A paper of prime importance for Hittite studies has been read by Professor Fr. Delitzsch before the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences at Berlin. The Oriental Museum at Berlin has obtained a collection of cuneiform tablets from Boghaz Keui, among which are twenty-six fragments of vocabularies, copies of which will appear in the first part of the volume of Boghaz Keui inscriptions which Dr. Weidner is engaged in publishing. The vocabularies contain lists of Sumerian words with their pronunciation as well as their equivalents in Assyrian (or, as Professor Delitzsch calls it, Accadian) and Hittite. The Sumerologist will be grateful for the authoritative information they at last give as to the pronunciation of the Sumerian ideographs; the “Hittitologist” will be still more grateful for the first insight they afford into the character of the Hittite language spoken at Boghaz Keui. In Professor Delitzsch's paper the words are given in transcription. The paper will doubtless be the subject of much philological commentary. Meanwhile I offer a few notes upon it.

It is my intention to trace the history and evolution of the dome in Persia from the earliest times to the present day; and I hope to show at the same time the very important part played by Persia in the evolution of domed construction, which I believe has never been pointed out before. Before I can do this, however, I must first briefly review the dome in antiquity.

The present article was originally intended to be a supplement to Dr. Venkatasubbiah's dissertation on the Kalas, presented to the philosophical faculty of the University of Berne in 1910 and printed at Madras in 1911. Considering, however, the possibility that a certain number of European Sanskritists may not be acquainted with this dissertation, we believe it necessary to repeat here the most important points which have been discussed there, hoping that in this form the article may be understood by all scholars interested in these matters.–E. M.

In the discussion on the date of Kanishka which took place last year much prominence was given to the so-called Vikrama era of 58 B.C., and arguments were put forward by those who favoured an early date for Kanishka to prove, not only that this era was founded by him, but that all the recorded dates of the Śaka, Pahlava, and Kushan rulers of Northern India are referable to it. Some discoveries which I have recently made at Taxila throw, I think, fresh light on this question, and, though they do not settle precisely the date of Kanishka, appear to prove that he was not at any rate the founder of the era of 58 B.C. and could not have come to the throne until the close of the first century A.D. or later.

The low ebb of sinological studies in this country is all too clearly indicated by the fact that the present text is actually the first to be published out of the enormous mass of Chinese manuscripts brought home by Sir Aurel Stein tive years ago. It is not altogether unbefitting, however, that the place of honour should be accorded to a brochure giving some account of the Tunhuang district, and including a description of the famous grottos where the whole collection of manuscripts was found. The Tun Huang Lu is indeed tantalizingly brief, consisting as it does of only 893 characters all told. But within that small compass it touches on many interesting points, the proper discussion of which would require more space than can be given to them here; and one passage, at least, throws a flood of light 011 a vexed question of topography which has never yet been solved. It is worth reading, in any case, as a short summary of what was known about this remote but highly important region towards the close of the T'ang dynasty. My reasons for assigning the text to this period are duly set forth in the accompanying notes. The handwriting is bold, and for the most part clear enough. A few characters, however, are to be found which the penman has allowed to lapse into “grassiness”—the especial bane of every foreign student. These I have deciphered to the best of my ability, but in the lack of any assistance from native or other experts I cannot feel quite certain of the correctness of my readings. As regards the style of the document, its terseness frequently verges on obscurity, and the punctuation (omitted as in nearly all Chinese MSS.) has been by no means easy to supply in certain passages.

In a paper at p. 79 above, it is sought to show that the name of the race to which Kanishka and his connections belonged was Kusa or Kusha; not Kushan or Kushān, as is believed at present. I would invite closer attention to some of the evidence, which hardly seems to bear out such a view: other parts of it are being dealt with by Mr. Allan.

In these notes I propose to deal as compendiously as possible with a number of points in the Edicts to which even after the publications of Kern, Senart, and Bühler more or less obscurity still attaches, or upon which additional light may be thrown by the aid of subsequent discoveries, such as that of the Arthaśāstra by Kauṭalya. However anxious we may be to avoid the fault of punarukti, it will be impossible in some cases not to recur to passages which have already been frequently discussed.