In the Journal for the year 1902 a summary was given of the description of Persia and Mesopotamia found in the Nuzhat-al-Qulūb, a geographical and cosmographical work written by Ḥamd-Allah Mustawfi in 740 (1340). In the course of next year I hope to publish (in the series of the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Fund) the Persian text of the geographical chapters of this work, and this will be followed by a full translation, with notes to elucidate geographical questions. Ḥamd-Allah, who is our earliest systematic geographer writing in Persian, collected his materials from the works of the earlier Arab geographers, and from various Persian monographs which had been written each to describe a single province of the Moslem Empire; and it is found that the texts of some of these monographs, thereto adding somewhat of his own knowledge, after much curtailment and a rearrangement of the order in the articles, he has transcribed almost verbatim, to form the various chapters of the Nuzhat. A good instance of this method of writing a new book is the chapter describing the provinces of Fārs and Shabānkārah, which in truth is little but a shortened transcript of the Fāre Nāmah, a work written two centuries before the time of Ḥamd-Allah, and of which the British Museum possesses an excellent MS.

Among the recent acquisitions of the India Office Library is a volume of the Tārīḫ Baghdād of the Ḫaṭīb containing biographies of men with the names of 'Umar, 'Uthmān, and 'Alī. The MS. is acephalous, the end is missing, and many leaves have been lost, so that an edition of the whole text is out of the question. Paper and writing point to the beginning of the seventh century of the Hiğrah. This volume of the extensive biographical dictionary of the Ḫaṭīb does not appear to exist in other European libraries, the greater portion of the work having been lost. Salmon published in 1904 the geographical introduction of the book with a French translation; in his introduction he gives an account of the known MSS. and a biography of the author. With regard to the MSS. enumerated by Salmon, it must be noted that Amar (JA., vol. xi, 237, 1908) has shown that the MSS. Bibl. Nat. 2130 and 2131 are not the original work of the Ḫaṭīb, but parts of an amplification of his work by Ibn an-Nağğār (d. 643 a.h.). The fact that No. 2131 is called the twenty-eighth volume, and contains biographies of men named 'Alī following later, according to the alphabetical arrangement of the Ḫaṭīb, than those contained in the India Office MS., seems to prove that the latter is a portion of the twenty-seventh volume.

I have elsewhere (see SBE. xxxi) thus designated this chapter. Yet, as in the case of the “eschatology” and of the “moral idea”, I by no means intend here to imply that either of those concepts or this “Dualism” had never been mooted elsewhere in any obscure form at any period previous to the composition of this Yasna XXX. The most of such ideas as these issue inevitably from the human consciousness in many places in the course of ages; here, however, they are definitively grasped and pointed in synoptic statement, whereas elsewhere they were, if at all, loosely surmised, and to be gathered only through inference. I call attention to this chief doctrine of the piece with especial care on account of its epochmaking importance as offering the initiative in the above sense to all analogous subsequent suggestion.

General A. Houtumschindler has been kind enough to send me a photograph of a new Vannic inscription discovered by Count Kanitz, an attaché of the German Legation at Teheran, in October, 1910, at a place called Mākū. The stone, however, had been brought from some ruins 10 miles south-west of Mākū. The photograph was given to General Houtumschindler by the discoverer. The inscription, it will be seen, belongs to Ruśas II. In continuance of my previous notation its number will be XCII.

The record of archæological discoveries made during the year 1910—11 must of necessity fall short of the brilliant accounts which Mr. Marshall has been in the habit of publishing in the pages of this Journal with regard to the work of previous years. Mr. Marshall himself was absent on long leave during the whole period, and while I was officiating for him I had to devote myself almost entirely to questions connected with the preservation of ancient monuments and museum administration, and to the duties of office routine.

A Few months ago I endeavoured to give to an audience in this room some account of an ancient Arabian poet, 'Abīd of Asad, whose remains, recently recovered from the oblivion of the past, are now being printed. I explained the great position which the poet occupied in old tribal Arabia: how his championship in verse was as important to the interests of the clan as the prowess in arms of its men of war; and how in the southern deserts he held a place scarcely inferior to that of the prophet in tribal Israel. It was his business to extol the deeds of the warriors, to inspire the members of the tribe with fortitude and devotion to its interests, to maintain its cause in all contentions, to strike its enemies with biting satire, and to uphold the heroic ideal of conduct to which all should aspire by praise of the worthy, and especially by consecrating the memory of the valiant dead in those noble laments which form the most beautiful and touching monuments of old Arabian verse.

In a recent number of the Ep. Ind., vol. x, p. 106 ff., Mr. R. D. Banerji has edited twenty-one Brāhmī inscriptions of the “Scythian” period, of which nine had been already published by him, under the name of R. D. Bandhyopadhyaya, in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, N.S., vol. v, pp. 243 f., 271 ff. We certainly owe a great debt of gratitude to him for making these records accessible, although the way in which he has acquitted himself of his task cannot meet with unreserved praise. I do not undervalue the difficulties which beset these inscriptions. I know that it cannot be expected that the first reading and interpretation of an inscription of this class should be always final. But what may be reasonably expected, and what, I am sorry to say, is wanting in Mr. Banerji's paper, is that carefulness and accuracy that have hitherto been a characteristic feature of the publications in the Epigraphia Indica. It would be a tedious and wearisome business to correct almost line for line mistakes that might have been easily avoided with a little more attention. The following pages will show that this complaint is not unjustified.

In the highly valuable collection of MSS. which Dr. M. A. Stein brought home from his remarkable expedition to East Turkestan, some are found written in the “runic” script we now know from inscriptions in Mongolia and Siberia, and of which the recent investigations in Turfan and the adjacent localities also have brought interesting specimens to light. Dr. Stein has done me the honour to request me to publish the MSS. in this kind of script found by him, and it has been a pleasure to me to do so in this preliminary paper, trusting that in a later, final paper I shall succeed in clearing up several of the mysteries and doubts which I have been obliged to leave unsolved here. It has been of great assistance to me that owing to Dr. Stein's kindness I have been able to make use of the two original MSS., here designated I and II, in one of our public libraries in Copenhagen.