In 1898 Queen Victoria sent a recording of her voice to the Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia and his Queen, Itege Taitu, together with some phonograph apparatus. The following year Menelik and Taitu returned the compliment by making recordings of their voices and sending them to Queen Victoria. The latter recordings have been preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, but Queen Victoria's recording was later destroyed on her instructions. The text of her message has, however, been preserved and is reproduced here. The message was dated Osborne, 8 August 1898:

‘I, Victoria, Queen of England, hope your Majesty is in good health. I thank you for the kind reception which you have given to my Envoys, Mr. Rodd and Mr. Harrington. I wish your Majesty and the Empress Taitou all prosperity and success, and I hope that the friendship between our two Empires will constantly increase’.

Throughout the ages from antiquity until modern times the extraordinary prowess of the horse-archers of Asia has excited wonder and admiration in those who have had the opportunity of observing them in action or of hearing of their feats. From the comments of observers and historians, therefore, a reasonably instructive account of their capabilities might be assembled. There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that a picture based solely on data of this kind would have its limitations in that it would capture the impression of what the eye perceived rather than reproduce the details of technique which alone can enable us to distinguish between fact and fiction or probable and improbable in the accounts of our witnesses. By a happy chance the evidence of a Mamlūk writer goes far to fill the lacuna. The source of the testimony is a technical treatise bearing on the training of archers. Entitled Kitāb ghunyat al-ṭullāb fī ma'rifat al-ramy bi 'l-nushshāb, the work was written circa 769/1368 by a certain Ṭaybugha '-Baklamishi '1-Yūnānī, about whom we know almost nothing beyond what can be gleaned from his treatise. Unlike many Arabic technical manuals of a similar kind dating from the later Middle Ages, the Ghunya will bear examination by the expert, for Ṭaybughā has an essentially practical mind and a complete grasp of his subject-matter. To judge from the number of extant MSS—17 are traceable in published works of reference—the work would appear to have been long esteemed throughout the Middle East as an authoritative source of instruction, and it may be surmised that Ṭaybughā's own words provide a clue to one of the reasons for its popularity: ‘Since archery and riding are enjoined by authentic command of the Prophet and since I knew of no work by any predecessor on the subject of shooting from horseback I felt I should accord the two accomplishments joint treatment in a single work, seeking thereby to comply with the command of God and His Messenger and to render a service to those of my brethren who campaign and fight in the jihād’.

A few years ago the author was invited to inspect a Persian door which at that time was on a firm in Oxfordshire. It was found to be a fine decorated lacquer-painted door, and the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford sought and obtained the permission of the owner, Martyn Skinner, Esq., to exhibit the door on loan at the Museum, where it remained on display for nearly two years between 1962 and 1964. It is now back in the owner's possession at Ilex House, Fitzhead, Taunton, Somerset.

Among the manuscripts in the National Library in Bangkok are a number of sმmut dam ‘blank books’ written in yellow orpiment on blackened paper. Many of these are in Thai, but a few, catalogued under the number XVII 37 are in two scripts that show very close affinities with South Indian Grantha.

Stanzas 201 and 202 of PuṟanāṆūṟu are addressed by Kapilar to Iruṅkoveḷ. The following are the principal matters known about Iruṅkoveḷ from the stanzas and their old gloss:

He was an important chief among the Veḷir and his ancestors were the rulers of the well-fortifiied Tuvarai—‘Tuvarāpati’ according to the gloss—for 49 generations. He was obviously not at Tuvarai in Kapilar's time.

The Smert' Kukotay-khana i ego pominki (henceforth K) recorded by Chokan Valikhanov in 1856 and translated by him Russian Between 1861 and 1865, and Bok Murun (BM) recorded by V.V. Radlov in 1862 are two poems of remarkably ‘heroic’ temper that derive from a common source. The deal with the funeral feast of Kökötöy-kan, which is proverbial in Kirgiz as Kökötöydün aši, than which there was no greater funeral repast. Of the two poems, the former is apparently the more archaic, yet the latter too has archaic features. Regrettably, the Kirgiz original of K is lost but for some three couplets cited by Valikhanov in separate essays. Nevertheless, Valikanov evidently translated closely, since it is possible to recognize not only the ‘parallelistic’ structure of lines in various passages but also traditional epic formulae, including epithets, that occur in other Kirgiz heroic poems, including BM. The translation seems to be so close that if a Kirgiz bard, a good scholar, and a cryptographer could ever be brought together, it should prove possible to reconstruct much of the text of the lost K. Even this translation, alas, is unfinished. To supplement it very barely indeed there is in Valikhanov's published works a prose résumé of the Manas cycle, including the Kukotay (Kökötöy) episode. The latter does not entirely agree with K. It will be referred to here below as ‘the Résumé’. Radlov's Kirgiz text of BM is accompanied by a German verse-translation in another volume. Both require a word of assessment.