In his admirable Catalogue of the Coins of Ancient India, pp. 282–4 and Introduction, pp. clvii ., Mr. J. Allan describes what he calls “a puzzling group” of coins in the British Museum, of which he has deciphered the legends ; but he is unable to throw any light upon them beyond the fact that they were obtained by the late Mr. Rodgers at Barwala (in Hissar District, Panjab). I am able to locate them with certainty, and propose to add some relevant observations.

According to the promise in BSOS., X, 365, I give translation of and brief commentary on the Khotanese Rāma text. Considerable progress has been made since the lecture published in the Journ. Amer. Or. Soc., 59, 460 ff., and also since the printing of the text. Superseded views expressed in the lecture are ignored here. Certain introductory matter can be added.

1. References to the Rama story in Khotanese.

(a) E 6, 4–5.

rāmä daśagrīvi sīysau nāte laṃggä kīnthai bāste

ttye käḍäna jīvätu rruste rāmāyanä ttandī arthi

valmīki räṣayī haṃbaste haṃtsa drūgyau hāḍe

cvī lovi mānya pyūṣḍe samu haṃdara-ysaṃthva karma

“From Rāma Daśagrīva took Sīta, he carried her to Lankā, city. For that he lost his life. Such is the content of the Rāmāyaṇa. Vālmīki the sage composed it, but with lies. For the person who listens to him with honour, surely there is karma leading to other births.”

(b) E 6, 90.

rāmä päte karjunä karṇä ṣṣai ttä ysaṃthīgya samudru

“Rama's father Karjuna and Karṇa these too are in the ocean of birth.”

§ 1. L'importance de la formulation négative, qui définit puissamment le Sanskrit à toutes les étapes de son évolution, apparat avec clarté dès les mantra védiques. Un nombre considérable de formules ne nous sont données que sous l'aspect négatif, soit dans l'ordre de la constatation, soit dans celui de la prohibition. Certains verbes ne figurent guère qu'en proposition négative, ainsi nas- riṣ- rudh- vyath- sridh-. Il se produit très fréquemment qu'une formulation faite d'abord en termes positifs soit reprise' par voie négative (ou l'inverse, mais bien plus rarement), sous une teneur identique ou analogue: ainsi ṇo párā dāḥ, viii, 71, 7 (les références numériques sans nom d'ouvrage concernent le Rgveda), ou avec contre-partie plus stricte dviṣántam máhyaṃ randháyan mó aháṃ dviṣaté radham, i, 50, 13, párā suva/ yád bhadráṃ tán na suva, v, 82, 5. Des séries de strophes sont bâties sur le schème de la “contre-partie” on trouvera des exemples groupés à des fins particulières, pour le RV., par Oldenberg, ZDMG., lx (notamment, p. 727 sqq.); pour la TS., par Weber, Ind. Stud., xiii, p. 77 sqq. (passim); pour l'AV., par M. Gonda, Stilistische Studie over AV. i–vii, p. 33.

The Jain recension of the Siṃhāsanadvātriṃśikā contains two Apabhraṃśa, or as we shall see rather Old Gujarati, stanzas which, as far as I can judge, have not been satisfactorily dealt with by either Weber or Edgerton.

In Professor Geiger's new Grammar of the Sinhalese Language there is so much that is admirable and instructive that one is loth to dissent from any of his statements. When, therefore, I find myself unable iurare in verba magistri in respect of a few of his etymologies, I do so with regret, and hope for pardon.

A New religion has no theology; that develops later. It is only natural that Islam should show some influence of the older religions among which it grew up. New ideas came in with converts or through talk with men of other faiths. Muslim theology moved in a circle, and came back to its starting-point with the same ideas deeper and riper. The second and third centuries of the Hijra were the formative period, after which thought degenerated into the splitting of hairs. The religious world was in a ferment which threw out many strange ideas. Sober thinkers mostly belonged to the Mu‘tazila, who taught the freedom of the human will to free God from the responsibility for sin and evil. Others found a solution of this problem in other ways, some being forerunners of al-Ash‘ari, who in 300 A.H. deserted the Mu‘tazila and used their methods to build up the system of orthodoxy. Many of these men were not Arabs, and their writings have perished; so all that is known of their teaching comes from the works of their opponents. The earliest of these is Maḳālāt al-islāmiyyīn by al-Ash‘ari; it is also the most valuable, for it is objective and free from theological hatred. The author has done his best to report what these men taught, and his education fitted him for this. Later books are not so impartial. ‘Abd al-Ḳāhir al-Baghdādi († 429) calls each deviation from the strait path an error.

For the meaning of ttāgutta, listed in BSOS., VIII, 138, further evidence has now been found to replace the conjectural meaning there assigned. It is necessary for this purpose to quote, however reluctantly, from still unpublished texts, but it is time to make the correction. It will be seen that not all the quoted passages can yet be translated in full.

It is well known that in a great number of words e and o in Kanarese, Tuḷu, and Telugu correspond to i and u in Tamil and Malayalam, With reference to this interchange K. V. Subbayya in his “Primer of Dravidian Phonology ”, published in the Indian Antiquary, lays down the following rule: “ i before cerebrals and liquids and followed by a becomes e in Classical Canarese, Tuḷu and Telugu and also in New Tamil and New Malayalam.” Likewise with respect to u and o he says: “Pr. Drav. initial u becomes o when followed by a and before cerebrals and liquids. This change is found in classical Can., Tel. and Tuḷu, and also in New Tamil and Malayalam.” This formulation is faulty in as much as there is no restriction on the consonants intervening between the i or u and the following a-vowel.

The Mamlūk empire contributed decisively to the crushing of the Copt element in Egypt. Nevertheless, the public offices and the offices of the management of the estates of the emirs, were full of Coptic scribes, who often drew upon themselves the hatred of the population, and became the scapegoats when popular passions ran high. The Jihād spirit of the closing stages of the struggle against the Crusader and the Mongols also played its part in creating agitation against the Christians. It is instructive to find that after about 1250 the tide of theological polemical literature against Christians and Christianity rose to its highest. These movements were fostered with the express purpose of whipping up popular antagonism. Speeches, pamphlets, fatwas were used to stir the people in the struggle against the Copts, and in particular those holding office.

Owing to service in H.M. Forces it has been impossible to check references in all cases. The reader's indulgence is therefore sought for any errors which may have slipped into the text.

The following loan-words are taken from two newspapers, the Kheḍā vartamān of 5th December, 1928, and the Gujarat Times of 1st January, 1929.

The editors are both Hindus and the readers were for the most part Hindu also. The newspapers contain only a few words in English characters, perhaps eight or nine in each number. The proportion of English loan-words to the total may be about 2 per cent, but this is inevitably only a rough estimate.

The words have been transliterated faithfully with two exceptions—

(1) Inherent a of final consonants is omitted.

(2) Inherent a (not final) is omitted, if not pronounced. In such cases it is indicated by a dot. In Gujarati, however, there are certain consonants which do not alter their form when conjunct, such as “ ka ”. For practical purposes, this is of little importance, as conjunct consonants are often not used, when permissible.

In preparing the list some very uncommon words and transitory political expressions like “Sāyaman gobek” have been omitted. There are one or two words included, which are not English, e.g. peseṭā and Mādrīd, which have been included for their interest. Peseṭā has probably been taken for the English version of the Spanish word, as the t is retroflex. It is not clear, however, why the dental d is used for Mādrīd.

The articles in which few, if any, loan-words occur, are the political leading articles, a notice of a meeting of Brahmans, and a serial story about old Rajputana.

The Zoroastrian calendar which was in official use in the Sasanian times in Iran is conveniently called “Young Avestan”. This system of time-reckoning, which was adopted by the Persian government in the Achæmenian period and most probably about 441 B.C., was introduced later in Cappadocia and Armenia. The date of its introduction in Armenia is not known. According to Moses of Khorene, the famous Armenian historian (ii, 59), the order (or succession) of the weeks, months, and years which was unknown to the Armenians was regulated by Ardashes II, king of Armenia. Gutschmid (Kleine Schriften, iii, p. 209 n.) is inclined to identify this king with the historic king Tiridates, the founder of the Armenian branch of the Arsacid dynasty and a contemporary of Nero. But the names of the 10th and 12th Arm. months point to an earlier date for the said introduction. The former is called “Mareri”, which name according to Marquart's conjecture (Untersuchungen zur Geschichle von Ēran, p. 205) is derived from Maidhyāirya, the well-known Avestan season festival or gāhanbār, which was originally in the 10th Persian month and remained there till the time of the first of the 120 yearly intercalations, which must have taken place (if carried out regularly) about 321 B.C. The name of the 12th Armenian month is ”Hrotic'“, which is believed to be the Armenian form of Frōtīgān-Frōdīgān, the Persian feast better known as Fravardīgān, the words being derived from the O.Pers. fravarti, Avestan fravashi.

The importance and function of the Secret Committee as an essential part of the East India Company's home government have in general been misrepresented or ignored. From the beginning the Company's executive body in London consisted of the rather large number of twenty-four and, since the Company was wholly dependent upon trade, the formation of a smaller, trustworthy committee, which in emergency could safeguard the Company's voyages, especially against the threat of war or piracy, by giving secret instructions to the ships' captains, was sooner or later inevitable. Likewise, as the Company became increasingly entangled in Indian politics, it realized the necessity of issuing secret political orders from London, and since the Company's unwieldy executive body was obviously ill-fitted for this task a Secret Political Committee soon evolved. That the duty of ensuring the safety of the Company's ships and of issuing secret political orders should have been entrusted to one and the same Committee was convenient and natural. Historians have not only underestimated the significance of this Committee's activities down to its statutory establishment in 1784, but have also tended to disregard the part it thenceforth played, describing it at best as a mere ministerial instrument or as a channel, conveying to India the Ministry's instructions “which it could neither discuss nor disclose”. The truth is much less one-sided than this, and in fact long before 1784 the Secret Committee had emerged as the cabinet council of the Company, the most powerful Committee at the India House, a status which it maintained until the Company's extinction in 1858.

IN an article published several years ago we have collected evidence corroborating al-Maqrīzī's statement (mistrusted by Quatremère in Histoire des Mongols) that siyāsa, the legal code of the Mamlūks, was founded upon the Great Yāsa of Chingiz-Khān. The Great Yāsa was not merely a code of criminal and civil law but a system of rules governing the entire political, social, military, and economic life of the community which adopted it. The expansion of this system outside the Mongol nation was due to the belief that it was responsible for the extraordinary military success of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, and that it might be regarded as a talisman ensuring victories on the battle-field. The Yāsa rules concerning communal organization were even more important from this point of view than the laws treating of the behaviour of individuals. It is natural, therefore, to suppose that not only the Mamlūk criminal, civil, and commercial law but also the general organization of the Mamlūk state was based upon the Yāsa. The present article, inspired by the attempts made in modern times to collect and systematize the fragmentary evidence concerning the contents of the Yāsa, is intended to show that this organization is indeed comprehensible only in the light of such evidence. Some preliminary remarks are necessary.

In the course of his work on the new Burmese-English Dictionary the writer of this article had access to certain manuscripts compiled by various members of the Northern Burma Mission who were stationed at Ava and other places in Upper Burma during the early nineteenth century. The manuscripts contain a collection of Burmese proverbs, which were rendered into French by an unknown missionary. The writer sought the assistance of Mrs. A. M. Blandford, 37 Havers Lane, Bishop's Stortford, in deciphering and translating the French equivalents or translations into English; and reference has been made to these in preparing the translation—which is as literal as possible—and the notes as to application, etc., here given. Many of the proverbs are unfamiliar in modern times, and the writer's views as to their application are put forward as suggestions only. No attempt has been made to reproduce in the translations the rhymes of the Burmese. The proverbs were compared with (1) those given in Sagabon Hnittaung, which was compiled by U Taing of the Hanthawaddy Press, Rangoon (3rd impression, 1911), and (2) those given at the end of Stevenson's edition of Judson's Burmese-English Dictionary. The following proverbs (which are arranged in alphabetical order) do not appear in either of these collections and seem not to have been published before.

Muhammadan Law, like many other legal systems, leaves it entirely to the parties to make their own bargain. They can fix any price they like; there is no rule demanding its fairness or adequacy. Consequently there is also no remedy against a bargain solely on the ground that the one party has suffered a loss by reason of disproportion between his own and the other party's prestations (Arts. 356, 441 Mejelle, Art. 221 O.H.).

Yet inadequacy of price is not without importance in the Laws of Sale and Hire. In its desire to protect minors, Waqfs, and the State Treasury (Bait al-Māl) from unprofitable transactions, Muhammadan Law has made inadequacy of price a ground for relief when the bargain has been made on behalf of such persons or institutions.

During the whole of the tenth century from about 910 onwards, Tunhuang under the name of Kuei-i Chün was governed by members of the Ts‘ao family, who were more or less independent of the fugitive dynasties that rose and fell at Lo-yang and Pien-liang. The connection with China was practically limited to the bestowal of the title of chieh-tu-shih on the man in power if he cared to apply for it. The system seems to have worked well enough: with the Tibetan menace removed, the people enjoyed a fair measure of peace and prosperity, though the standard of living and culture in general never rose again to what it had been under the T‘angs before An Lu-shan's rebellion. The deterioration of arts and crafts dating from that disastrous upheaval is plainly observable in the manuscript rolls of this period: the highly finished paper of the seventh and eighth centuries with its beautifully glazed and stained surface has entirely disappeared, and what we find in its place is with rare exceptions thick, coarse, and drab-coloured. The handwriting, too, though sometimes vigorous, lacks the elegance and grace of former times.

The corruptions in the text of the Divyāvadāna are well known. As we now have it, it depends upon a number of modern copies of a single manuscript inaccessible in Nepal. Nor would access to this original be likely to solve all the difficulties. The editors declared that without continual reference to the Tibetan versions it would be impossible to give a satisfactory English translation. A series of highly important emendations was given by J. S. Speyer in the Vienna Oriental Journal (vol. xvi), but one passage there dealt with seems to require further consideration. It is in the story of Mākandika and his daughter, whom he wished to present as a wife to Buddha. The reply of Buddha is in verse (Divy., p. 519).

This list of words and phrases is part of the same volume which contains the Chinese-Malay vocabulary published in Vol. VI, Part 3, of the Bulletin, and is arranged on a similar plan. It has, however, offered greater difficulties than its predecessor owing to the fact that, as compared with Malay, Cham is an unfamiliar language; and though Aymonier and Cabaton's Dictionnaire Čam-Français (published at Paris by Ernest Leroux in 1906) is a first-class piece of work, it does not seem to solve all the problems involved in this vocabulary.

The Cham language is spoken by a dwindling population in Southern Annam and a larger group in French Cochin-China, Camboja, and Siam. The latter group is now completely Muslim, the former contains a minority of Muslims and about twice as many adherents of a species of Hinduism. Sanskrit and Arabic loan-words are therefore fairly numerous in the dictionary, though few will be found in this vocabulary. Apart from such obviously foreign elements, the Cham language is a curious blend of Indonesian and Mon-Khmer; and scholars still differ as to which of these two is the fundamental and original factor. The difficulty is increased by the circumstance that the morphology of these two families of speech is very similar, both using prefixes and infixes which in some cases are practically identical. This, however, is not a matter that need be discussed here.