There is a certain rock edict of Aśōka, regarding the interpretation and application of which no final result has as yet been arrived at. That this has been the case, is due chiefly to an unfortunate initial mistake, which introduced a supposed word, taken to mean “two and a half,” into the reading of a passage of primary importance which mentions a certain period of years. It was subsequently fully admitted that a misreading had been made. But the effect of that misreading remained. And, like similar mistakes in other matters, the initial mistake made here left an influence which neither the scholar who made it, nor subsequent inquirers, could shake off.

I have attempted, in the lists which accompany this paper, to collect and classify all discoveries of Roman coins made in India during the last century and a half, which have been regularly recorded in English scientific publications; adding to them some remarks on finds which, though not so published, it is impossible for me to ignore, since they came under my own observation. It is perhaps hardly necessary for me to enter on an elaborate explanation of the reasons why such tabulated information may be held to be of value, seeing that obviously, if the lists are accurate and exhaustive, a classification such as this assumes the nature of an index to a volume, or, as in the present case, to a very large number of volumes.

The Ahoms are a tribe of the Tai branch of the Indo-Chinese. They conquered Assam early in the thirteenth century a.d., and held it, as the ruling nation, for many centuries. Their language, which is now extinct, was an old form of the Tai language from which Siamese and Shan have sprung. It is now known by tradition to a few priests of the old Ahom religion. It had a considerable literature (including several valuable historical works), manuscripts of which are still extant. Some years ago the Assamese Government deputed a native official, Babu Golap Chandra Baruā, to learn the language and translate such documents as were of value and had survived. He is, I believe, the only person who knows both Ahom and English. Through his assistance I was enabled to publish a short grammar of Ahom (with selections and a vocabulary) in vol. lvi of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Since then I have received from him a short Ahom kōṣa, or dictionary, and also the text and translation of the cosmogony printed below.

Some modern commentators have ascribed the Bhaṭṭikāvya to Bhartṛihari, the author of the celebrated Śatakas, without assigning reasons for their assumption. It has never been shown why this kāvya, dealing with the story of Rāma, is entitled Bhaṭṭikāvya. The imaginary derivation of the title from either of the names Bhartṛihari or Bhaṭṭanārāyaṇa is so far-fetched that it must be rejected, if strong evidence be not adduced to prove that either of them was really the author of the epic.

The object of this essay is not so much to propound a new theory of my own, as to draw more prominent attention to one put forth by Mr. Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar in two papers contributed by him to the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1903. They are entitled Gūrjaras and Epigraphic Notes and Questions, No. III. Stated quite briefly, the theory is that the well-known ‘ Kings of Mahodaya ’ were Gūrjaras. Mr. Bhandarkar does not claim the whole credit of it for himself. Much of his material, as he himself admits, has been drawn by him from the Bombay Gazetteer. But he has added to it new material and fresh points of view, and worked up the whole into a consistent theory. To me it appears that, in the main, the theory is sound, and throws unexpected light on a period of Indian history until now very dark. I will first briefly explain the main positions of the theory, as I gather them from the two papers above referred to: the evidence, in detail, must be read in the papers themselves. Next, I shall set out, in detail, such further particulars as a closer examination of the contemporary records of that period appears to me to yield, partly in corroboration, partly in modification of Mr. Bhandarkar's theory.

From several centuries before the Christian era a double stream of traders and adventurers began to flow into Indo-China from, respectively, Northern and Southern India, reaching the upper parts of the peninsula by land through Burmā and its southern coasts by sea, and founding there settlements and commercial stations. Brahmanism and, later on, Buddhism (third century b.c.), with most other achievements of Indian culture, followed in the wake of these pioneers; and thus it is to ancient India that Indo-China owes her early civilization. By the dawn of the Christian era, as I have elsewhere demonstrated, Buddhism had already gained a firm foothold on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula near the head of the Gulf of Siām, whence it advanced and soon spread all over the country of the Më-Nam Delta. On the other hand, Brahmanism had established itself in Central and Northern Siām, where Swankhalôk and Sukhôthai formed its principal foci. It is not till about four centuries later that we begin to hear of Nagara Śrī Dharmarāja (Dharmanagara), or Ligor, as the chief centre of both Buddhism and Brahmanism on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula; and to find both faiths—but more especially Buddhism—firmly established in the territory of P‘hraḥ Prathom in the present Nakhōn C‘hai Śrī province, in the Më-Nam Delta.

No event since the time of the Prophet Muḥammad has, probably, so profoundly affected the history of Western Asia as the disastrous wave of Mongol Invasion which, beginning with the first conquests of Changíz Khán at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era, culminated in the sack of Baghdad and the extinction of the Caliphate by his grandson Húlágú Khán in a.d. 1258.

One of the papyri of the second century A.D. which Drs. Grenfell and Hunt lately discovered at Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, contains several passages in a barbarian language, which is presumably an Indian dialect. This may be concluded from the facts that that text—a farce—is concerned with a Greek lady named Charition, who has been stranded on the coast of a country bordering the Indian Ocean, and that the king of that country addresses his retinue by the words Ἰνδ⋯ν πρ⋯μοι, ‘ chiefs of the Indians.’ In other places the same king and his countrymen use their own language.

The fragment here referred to belongs to Mr. John Quinn, jun., of Liverpool, and was purchased by him from the collection of the late Mr. Boutcher, artist to Mr. W. K. Loftus in Assyria. The height and the width are nearly the same, being about two inches and seven-eighths. Like all the tablets from Nineveh, it is of baked clay, but the colour is much darker than the generality of documents from that site which have not been stained with bitumen, or some other material, in consequence of their 2,500 years' burial in the earth. According to a statement made by the agent who sold it, the fragment, at the time it came into his hands, was covered with grease, which would account for the exceedingly dark brown of the surface. Unfortunately, none of the lines, which number eighteen in all, are complete, about a third only of the middle portion of the longest of them being preserved.

The remarks which follow are based on notes which I have made in reading Professor Torp's Etruskische Beiträge, vols. i–ii (Leipzig, 1902–3). I have never myself studied the Etruscan language, and my knowledge of Dravidian is rather limited. I was, however, at once struck by the apparent analogy of several features in both families, and I have thought it worth while to arrange my notes and make a short abstract of them. I do not think that I have solved the vexed question about the origin of the old inhabitants of Etruria. But I hope to have shown that there are many interesting points in which their language follows the same principles as that of the Draviḍas, and that I have, in so doing, added something to the probability of the theory that the old Etrurians did not belong to the Indo-European stock.

Although the city of Kauśāmbī is frequently mentioned in the Pāli and Hindu classics, few data are given therein from which its position can be accurately determined. We shall see as we proceed that the details given in these books, when read in conjunction with what we learn from Yuan Chwang, enable us to fix with tolerable accuracy, but not with absolute certainty as yet, the probable position of this famous city.

The sources whence have come all the coins and seals obtained in Seistan are the extensive ruins situated to the east of the Helmand, in Afghan Seistan, which it has not been possible to explore thoroughly.

In January, 1904, in revisiting the more important Chalukyan temples of Mysore, we heard, for the first time, of the existence of two or three old temples in the Hassan district. Five miles from Arsikere, between that place and Hassan, one of these stands alone in a field off the turnpike. It belongs to the village of Haranhalli, which lies at a short distance off. Built in the form of a Maltese cross, it has a one-star formed sikra, similar to those of Somnathpur, but rather lower. Peculiarities of this tower are three smaller replica stars projecting from its base on three sides, each running up in sculptured tiers. Being small, they do not disturb the harmonious outline of the sikra.

There is a mountain-ridge on the old route to Kamīr viâ Bhimbar and Bahrāmgala which bears the name of Hastīvanj. It is near the ‘Alīābād Serai, but is on the other, or right, bank of the Pīr Pantsāl stream, and is marked on Dr. Stein's map of Kamīr. See also his Rājataranginī, book i, pp. 44–5, and vol. ii, pp. 394–5. Dr. Stein visited the spot and identified it as the place where King Mihrakul, who lived in the first part of the sixth century, is said to have had a hundred elephants thrown over the cliffs. The circumstance is mentioned in the Āīn Akbarī, Jarrett, ii, 382, but both there and at p. 347 id. the place is called in the Persian text Hastī Watar or Vatar. The name Hastīvanj occurs apparently for the first time in Ḥaidar Malik's history of Kamīr, which was written during Jahāngīr's reign and about 1621. After that it occurs in a note to the oldest MS. of the Rājataranginī, written apparently about 1680, and in Narayan Kūl's history, which was written about 1710. Ḥaidar Malik mentions the place in his account of Mihrakul near the beginning of his book. He there describes the incident, and says that the place has since been called Hastīvanj , because hastī means elephant (fīl) in the Hindī (qu. Sanskrit) tongue, and vanj in the same language means ‘going’ (raftan). Narayan Kūl's explanation is similar, and is probably copied from Ḥaidar.

In 1903 I purchased from a dealer in the Khan al-Khalil, in Cairo, a brass Astrolabe inscribed with the Kufy character, which I had examined, haggled for, and reluctantly left three years before. The fact is, that at the present day this old bazaar of Cairo is the last place to find anything of interest. The European visitors are tourists who are personally conducted, and who purchase wildly and at any cost the gaudy modern stuff which the dragoman recommends. The dealers are Armenians and Jews solely catering for this trade; and it was, I presume, only from sheer dilatoriness that the dealer had not sent it down to one of his brethren near the Ezbekieh, where it would have been quickly disposed of. At any rate, it was out of place among the forgeries and rubbish which form the feature of the once romantic Khan al-Khalil.

The following is a description of the coins referred to in Mr. Tate's article which appears in the present number of the Journal, pp. 663–672.

The following coins were sent by Mr. Tate, together with those described by Professor Rapson in the preceding article:—

Khalif coins of Taimarah mint are rare, but one of the year 94 is given in Tiesenhausen, No. 402.

The Kūrkūs are a Muṇḍā tribe living in the north of Berar and the adjoining parts of the Central Provinces. At the last Census, of 1901, their dialect was returned as spoken by 87,675 individuals.

The Baghdad of the “Arabian Nights” has ever been associated with the “goodly time and golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid,” and his name, like that of his contemporary Charlemagne, has attracted and annexed many a tale belonging to other periods. That this is true of one of the Baghdad tales is shown by its appearing as an actual occurrence in the “Munṭaẓam” of Ibn al-Jauzi at a date some 120 years later than the death of al-Raīd. The time was no longer ‘goodly,’ and the Caliphate was past its prime. Muqtadir, during whose reign it had declined apace, had died a violent death in 321 a.h., and his mother, aab, did not long survive him. His filial affection, which throughout his reign had allowed her an extent of influence prejudicial to his rule, continued unabated to its close, and his chief concern on starting for his fatal march against Mūnis was for what might be in store for her in the event of his perishing. According to the story of a female astrologer, his fears were prophetic in their accuracy. aab, though suffering from a mortal complaint and prostrated by her son's death, was called upon by his brother and successor, Qāhir, to disclose her hidden wealth. She disclaimed possessing more than a moderate sum, saying that any money of hers would have been used to save her son.

The well-known Śāradā character of Kaśmīr is described by Bühler p. 56 of his Indische Palaeographie. He points out that it is descended from the western variety of the Gupta type of alphabets, and notes that a modern variety of it is the so-called Ṭakkarī of Jammū and the neighbourhood. Bühler does not, so far as I am aware, mention any other of the modern alphabets of north-western India.