In August, September, and October, 1913, I was engaged on one of a series of journeys in Mongolia, which I hope, if I am given the opportunity to complete them, will enable me to collect sufficient data for a work about this little-known country and its people, a subject upon which English literature is perhaps even poorer than that of the other Western European nations, and certainly far poorer than that of Kussia. The particular journey in question started at Hailar, in Barga, and was pursued via the valley of the Kerulen River and Urga to the Mongolyor Goldfields on the Upper Iro and thence to Kiakhta, where modern means of travel again became available for the return to Peking. During this journey I saw a great variety of lamaseries and temples; I had as my constant and only companions two lamas, and for a week I lived continuously in a lamasery in the room of a lama. I was thus able to observe a large number of facts, some of which may be of interest to students of Lamaism, even if only as having been noted in a remote corner of the vast domain of the Yellow Faith, where, unlike Tibet, Englishspeaking people have seldom travelled.

The object of the present note is to throw some light on certain grammatical forms which are met with in Tulasī Dāsa's Rāmacaritamānasa, and which either have not been paid sufficient attention hitherto or have remained unrecognized or have even been utterly misunderstood.

The following pages contain a rather circumstantial account of certain negotiations between the Buwaihid, 'Aḍud al-Daula, and the Emperor Basil, the slayer of the Bulgarians, consequent on the presence of Basil's defeated rival, Bardas Scleros, in honourable captivity at Baghdad. His defeat at Pancalia in A.D. 979 very nearly coincided with 'Aḍud al-Daula's final conquest of ‘Irāḳ, which was followed by the expulsion from Mosul of the Hamdanid Abu Taghlib. Between him and Scleros existed the tie of self-interest cemented by one of affinity: they had assisted each other against their respective adversaries, and had both been defeated. Abu Taghlib's defeat was final; driven from Diyār Bakr by the troops of 'Aḍud al-Daula, he fled to Syria and perished by a treacherous Arab hand. But no impassable barrier as yet interposed between Scleros and the object of his ambition. He had escaped to Mayyāfāriḳīn, which had lately submitted to ‘Aḍud al-Daula, and had sent thence his brother Constantine as his envoy to Baghdad with an appeal for succour and an offer of allegiance. Contemporaneously arrived at Baghdad an envoy from Basil with instructions to procure, at whatever cost, the surrender of Scleros, who was obviously a valuable pawn in the monarchs’ political game. 'Aḍud al-Daula thereupon caused him and his followers to be promptly conveyed to Baghdad, and the game proceeded.

The fixing of the exact time of the earliest Indian king whose inscriptions havesurvived to our days depends very much on the dates of two contemporaries whom he mentions: Magā or Makā, and Alikasudara or Alikyashudala. The former has been identified long ago with Magas of Cyrene, and the second was either Alexander of Epirus, or, as Professor Beloch thinks, Alexander of Corinth. The fresh dates to which these three rulers are assigned in Beloch's Griechische Geschichte induce me to reconsider the much-discussed question of the period of Aśōka's reign.

Central asia has come as a boon to all of us; it is a land of universal brotherhood. For centuries it has been the meeting-point of all races: Hindus, Persians, Turks, Tibetans, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Manichaeans used to live there side by side in a happy spirit of harmony; and the same spirit of harmony now seems to inspire our Central Asian studies. Western and Eastern explorers — English, French, German, Russian, Japanese—entered into rivalry only in the most chivalrous mood. England can be proud of having led the way; the glory of the first and the most brilliant discoveries will for ever remain attached to the name of Sir Aurei Stein, a man of exceptional abilities, who has given proof of the highest gifts in the most different directions—as a philologist, as an archaeologist, as an explorer. I would compare him witli his patron saint, ablbīṁṭa-devatā, the Chinese pilgrim Hwan-tsang. Both traversed the same countries in their peregrinations; both had to endure the same hardships, had to prove the same energy; both brought home a treasure of notes, observations, and documents; both were cheered by the same hope of benefiting mankind, the Chinese monk with the word of Buddha, Stein with scientific and historical truth. Both proved equally right; catholicity belongs to science as well as to religion. No national pride interfered to raise difficulties in the working up of the mass of documents collected by Stein. Some of them have been entrusted to Thomsen, a Dane, the wonderful decipherer of the Orkhon Turkish runes; some to Von Le Coq, a German, himself another explorer of Central Asia; some to La Vallée Poussin, a Belgian, one of the authorities on Mahāyāna Buddhism. Pelliot, the French émule of Stein, who shared with him the treasures hoarded in the celebrated cave at Twan-hwang, was called upon for a catalogue of the Chinese MSS. Chavannes, the leading Sinologist of our day, had for his own part the task of publishing Chinese wooden tablets dating from the early centuries A.D. M. Senart and Father Boyer, both of high renown as decipherers of Kharoṣṭrī characters, were asked to accept a share as co-editors of the tablets traced in that sort of writing. Professor Gauthiot obtained the Sogdian fragments. I myself received the leaves written in the Tokharian language.

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.

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.