The original of the MS. here reproduced was recently presented to the A Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies by Professor Arberry, with the suggestion that the handwriting might be found to be that of Sir W. Jones. This conjecture, as will be shown below, has proved to be correct.

In a footnote to page 1083 of K. C. Balderston's Thraliana (Oxford, 1942) we read Mrs. Thrale's opinion of our only full-length biography of Sir William Jones (1746–1794), that written by his friend Sir John Shore (later Lord Teign-mouth) and prefixed to the definitive edition of the great scholar's published works: “This Fashion of publishing Lives & Remains is a very amusing Fashion—& Sir William JOne's is the least entertaining among them all.” This judgement on Teignmouth's Memoirs is 'pretty generally shared by all who have read them with an eye to truth and proportion; the book is marred by the author's too patent anxiety to make of his hero a prophet of Clapham evangelicalism, and to mitigate the harshness of his uncompromising politics. For the bare facts of Jone's life and career Teignmouth may, nevertheless, be consulted with due caution: the purpose of this paper is to attempt to put into a proper perspective certain aspects of Jones's activities and character which have not been hitherto sufficiently delineated. Almost all the material used in this essay consists of unpublished letters from Jones to his one-time pupil and life-long friend; Lord Althorp, the 2nd Earl Spencer: I here record my gratitude to the present Earl Spencer, who most kindly lent me copies of a considerable range of this interesting correspondence.

The Cambridge History of English Literature dismisses Sir William Jones in one short paragraph at the end of the chapter by the late Professor Saintsbury on “The Lesser Poets of the Eighteenth Century”. Here he is described as “more of an orientalist and a jurist than a poet”, and brief commendation is given to his Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus and his Epigram from the Persian. There is no mention either of his other English works or his influence on English poetry. None of the shorter histories of English literature, as far as I know, alludes to him at all, although they all devote a good deal of space to the so-called “Precursors of Romanticism” in the eighteenth century. Professor R. M. Hewitt in his valuable essay, Harmonious Jones, the best appreciation of Sir William Jones as an English writer which has hitherto appeared, has pointed out that “recent histories of literature, though they still find room for James Macpherson, omit even the name of Sir William Jones, whose influence on poetry and on public opinion and general culture has been both more extensive and more permanent”.

“He intends going to India as a merchant but, previous to his embarkation, wishes to give some time to the study of foreign languages, European and Asiatic, and particularly the Persian.” These words are taken from a letter of introduction which Jones wrote to be presented to Schultens; even a professor must regard a language as something to be used, not merely an object of study. Jones had begun to learn Arabic at Harrow, and at Oxford a friend encouraged him to continue this study. He met in London a native of Aleppo and persuaded him to go to Oxford, hoping that other Oxford men would be glad to make use of his services and help to pay his salary, but in this he was disappointed. The Syrian was no scholar, so Jones made him translate Galland's version of the Arabian Nights into the vernacular, and then he turned this version into literary Arabic with the help of the grammars of Erpenius and Golius. What Jones accomplished in Arabic would have been a respectable performance for any ordinary man; when added to what he did in other languages it is marvellous. He worked under difficulties; he had his living to earn, the amount of Arabic literature in print was small—a poet might be represented by one poem only—some manuscripts were badly written, if we may judge from the facsimile of the Bughyat, yet on this narrow base he raised the edifice of a sound knowledge of the language and an appreciation of its qualities. As the later historians, Bar Hebræus and El-Makīn, were the first to be known in Europe, so a late work on literature, the Shekerdan (Sukkardān al-sulṭān al-malik al-Nāṣir by Shihāb al-Dīn ibn Abī Ḥajala, written in 1356) is prominent in his pages.

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that of the various important contributions made by Sir William Jones to the initiation and development of Persian studies in Europe, none was more felicitous, or more far-reaching in its consequences, than his early labours with the lyrics of Ḥāfiẓ; and of these labours, none bore sweeter fruit than his making of the immortal “Shīrāzī Turk” into A Persian Song.

It would be a happier occasion to be able to announce the completion of the publication of all the Sogdian manuscripts that Sir Aurel Stein and M. Paul Pelliot secured from the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” at Tun-huang, were not this consummation overshadowed by the death of P. Pelliot, who has now followed Sir Aurel Stein after so brief an interval. The Sogdian MSS., which he entrusted to the care of the Bibliothèque Nationale, were believed lost for a number of years, but rediscovered by M. Filliozat in 1936. We cannot but admire the speed with which M. Benveniste has made them available to the public. As early as the spring of 1940 photographic reproductions of superb quality were published by Ejnar Munksgaard in Copenhagen; a few copies of this facsimile edition reached this country before communications were interrupted. A few weeks later M. Benveniste's monumental edition, comprising the transliteration, an excellent translation, a commentary of greatest learning which abounds in veritable pearls of linguistic notes, and a very full glossary which will make the publication of a Sogdian dictionary nearly superfluous, appeared in Paris, too late, however, for us to obtain the book; we had to curb our impatience until at long last, in September, 1945, we received this immensely valuable volume, through the kindness of the author and the good offices of the British Council.

The romance of Vīs and Rāmīn has many claims to our attention. Fakhr A al-dīn As'ad Gurgānī wrote his version of it some time between A.D. 1040 and 1054, almost nine centuries ago, and only half a century after Firdausī completed the Shāh-nāma. The poem is based on an old “pahlavī” tale vaguely reminiscent of Tristan and Isolde, King Mark and Brangane. Many of its episodes echo feelings and attitudes dissonant with the post-Islamic ideas of marriage, women, and love. The poetic gifts of Fakhr al-dīn Gurgānī are also beyond doubt. Whatever the inconsistencies in the presentation of characters, whatever the length of the dialogues and soliloquies of the two lovers, these defects are redeemed both by the purity of diction of the poet and by bis truly humane understanding of men's passions, soarings, and failures.

The word Gāndhārī has been chosen to head this study as a term sufficiently wide in its scope to embrace the forms of the one Middle Indian dialect of the north-west of India, centred in the old Gāndhāra region, around modern Peshawar, and which we meet in most varied sources. Under this name I propose to include those inscriptions of Aśoka which are recorded at Shahbazgaṛhi and Mansehra in the Kharoṣṭhī script, the vehicle for the remains of much of this dialect: To be included also are the following sources: the Buddhist literary text, the Dharmapada found in Khotan, written likewise in Kharoṣṭhī, of which a new reading of the text available in facsimile is given in BSOAS 11. 488–512; the Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood, leather, and silk from Caḍ'ota (the Niya site) on the border of the ancient kingdom of Khotan, which represented the official language of the capital Krorayina, K 572, 512 lou-lan <ləu-lan (lou in a series with alternation of k and l) of the Shan-shan kingdom, and of one document, no. 661, dated in the reign of the Khotana maharaya rayatiraya hinajha dheva ṿijida-siṃha. With this more copious material must be grouped the scattered traces of the same Middle Indian dialect in Khotanese, Tibetan, Agnean, Kuchean, the earlier Chinese Buddhist transliterations, as, in particular, in the Dīrghāgama of the Dharmaguptaka ṡect and the remains in Sogdian, Uigur Turkish, and in Mongol (in living use), and also in Manchu texts. The modern Dardic languages Ṣiṇā, Khowar, Phalūᵛa and others represent the same type of Middle Indian. Much material in Chinese texts, for most of us hidden and inaccessible, remains to be gathered and sifted. The preliminary studies of P. Pelliot in Les noms propres dans les traductions chinoises du Milindapañha (JA 1914. 2. 379–419), of Fr. Weller in his paper Über den Aufbau des Pāṭikasuttanta (Asia Major 5. 1928), and of E. Waldschmidt in his Bruchstücke buddhistischer Sūtras aus dem zentralasiatischen Sanskritkanon I, 1932, have hardly realized the importance of this North-Western Prakrit.

The advancement of learning is learning is chiefly made in these three ways—by pure research, by applied research, and by interesting the general public in the results achieved. The last item is not the least important, although scientists, especially those engaged in pure research, are apt to discount and even to ignore it. In any event it is essential to publish the fruits of research among fellow-scientists for criticism, appraisement, and development. The spark of learning, which passes from master to pupil, is so feeble that unless fanned to a vigorous flame by some external agency it is apt to flicker out. It was only by a stroke of good fortune that the works of Mendel were brought to light after a long lapse of years.

In 1946 the School of Oriental and African Studies is celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Sir William Jones: in 1948 University College, London, will celebrate that of Jeremy Bentham. In this there is something more than an accidental approximation of dates. All subsequent scientific English thinking about law is traceable to these two men. The English School of Analytical Jurisprudence; the great tide of law reform which swept through nineteenth-century England; the codification (the word is his own coinage) of law not only in England and India but in many different parts of the world: these things admittedly sprang from the genius of Jeremy Bentham. Sir William Jones's influence was smaller in volume, though almost as widely diffused. He had neither the apostolic fervour of reform nor the overflowing vitality which carried Bentham on with undiminished vigour to eighty-four years: he died before reaching his forty-seventh birthday. But his influence was, none the less, considerable. The first of our Orientalists who was also a lawyer, Colebrooke, Sutherland, Wynch, and other Sanskritists, the Macnaghtens and the Baillies followed in his footsteps. In particular Colebrooke, greatest of them all, and Ian Baillie came directly under his influence. But it is equally true, though less generally recognized, that he is the forerunner of the other great English school of legal philosophy, the historical and comparative school, and that the work of Sir Henry Maine and his successors might have lacked some of its most distinctive elements if Jones's translation had not rendered the Institutes of Manu available to Maine when he was writing Ancient Law. Indeed, Maine's whole career might have been different; for just as his known interest in Oriental legal systems led to Jones's appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, so it was the interest in Indian ideas evinced in Ancient Law which led to Maine's appointment as law member of the Governor-General's Council, and so to all his later work on similar topics.

The Club was an exclusive society; admission to it was eagerly sought, but not very easily obtained; election was by ballot and one black ball excluded; many eminent men, among them Gibbon, Lord Camden, Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester, Conversation Sharp, George Canning, and Samuel Rogers were temporarily or permanently refused admission, even Edmond Malone, who became its treasurer and “great Corner Stone”, had to make two or three attempts to get into it. To this society William Jones, aged 26, in the spring of 1773, was elected.

The material for this study is culled from the Epigraphia Zeylanica, and references are given to the various volumes in which the respective Inscriptions occur.

As early as 1821 Rasmus Rask identified Sinhalese as a speech belonging to the same class as Sanskrit, and added that Tamil belonged to quite a different class. Since then the subject has been studied and discussed by various scholars, and it is established beyond doubt that Sinhalese is an Indo-Aryan language. Dravidian languages have, however, had their influence on Sinhalese, chiefly through contact, and Tamil, being the language spoken by a large population in the neighbouring part of India, asserted a wide influence on the vocabulary, grammar, and literature of Sinhalese. Before examining the Dravidian loan-words in Sinhalese and the influence of Dravidian languages on its structure, the amount of the indebtedness of Sinhalese writers to Tamil authors for their subject matter will be examined here.

In 1767 Sir William “borrowed from Dr. Russel and copied the keys of the Chinese language, which he wished to learn” (Life, p. 78). In 1770 he wrote to Count Reviczki, “I succeeded in comparing one of the Odes with the version of Couplet and analysed every word, or more properly every figure in it.” Couplet's version (in Latin) had appeared about a hundred years previously. This is presumably the Ode that Sir William subsequently turned into Latin verse (Works, vol. x, p. 317). Reviczki replied (possibly with slight irony), “Pray inform me when you learned the Chinese language. I did not suspect that this was one of your accomplishments; but there are no bounds to your acquisitions as a linguist.” In 1771 Sir William writes to a friend, “I am sorry the characters you sent me are not Persian but Chinese, which I cannot decipher without a book which I have not at present.” It does not appear that after this period Sir William was ever able to devote time to Chinese linguistic studies. But in a “memorandum on objects of inquiry during my residence in Asia” which he drew up when on his way to India in 1783, he included “The Shi-King or 300 Odes”. The list was a very varied one, and also included “Britain discovered, an Heroic Poem on the Constitution of England. Model, Homer”. In 1790 he undertook to give the second Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His subject was The Chinese. His sources dated chiefly from the end of the seventeenth century. He seems to have been unaware of the Mémoires concernant les Chinois, the bulk of which had already appeared. He told his audience (Works, vol. iii, p. 147), “Their philosophy seems yet in so rude a state as hardly to deserve the appellation,” and “of painting, sculpture, or architecture, as arts of the imagination, they seem (like other Asiatics) to have no idea”. He had probably not seen the essay, “Sur les beaux Arts de la Chine et principalement sur l'Architecture” that had appeared in Lettres d'un missionaire à Pekin, in 1782. Much of the rest of the discourse seems to be still founded on Couplet.

This article describes the manner in which the Italians dealt with the problem of an Islamic society which was bot a religious association and a political organization, the Sanusiya order of Sufis in Cyrenaica; or, rather, it describes their treatment of one of the many facets of this complex problem, the religious endowments of the order. It was a problem which very European power has had to face when it has conquered Muslim lands; the same problem which, in many different forms, the French and British have had to solve in their North African and Near Eastern possessions.

This monograph was originally intended as a continuation of “Swahili Phonetics”, which appeared in African Studies, vol. 1, nos. 2 and 3, 1942, but war-time typographical difficulties rendered publication impossible then. I am very grateful to the editor of the S.O.A.S. Bulletin for publishing it now. Although it may be read as a separate monograph, some knowledge of Swahili phonetics is necessarily taken for granted, and I have numbered the paragraphs as from the end of “Swahili Phonetics”, so as to allow for cross-reference to that article.