bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
XXI. The Ethiopic Senkessar
Authors: Guidi I.
Published: March 2011

The Synaxaria, as also the Menologia, are not among the oldest of hagiographical texts, and consequently their use in public worship in Oriental churches is relatively modern. In the case of the Coptic—Alexandrine Church with which I am now dealing, at the date when its I Synaxarium was composed, Arabic had for long past; taken the place of Coptic as the living language; indeed, in my view, its compilation was an outcome of that religious and literary movement which, from the thirteenth century onwards, gavefresh life and improved order to the Church of Alexandria. The question of the immediate sources of this work—one not as yet ripe for treatment— cannot be dealt with in this place; it may, however, be pointed out that the Synaxarium, as the product of Arabic speaking people, could be easilyput together from all the hagiographical works in use throughout Eastern Christendom by speakers of that tongue. Hagiographical literature is to a great extent a monastic product, and its Greek branch had for its main centre Palestine, and the convents of St. Sabas and of Sinai—witness the names of Cyril of Skythopolis, of John Moschos, of Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, etc.
XXII. Documents Sanscrits de la Seconde Collection M. A. Stein
Authors: de la Vallee Poussin L.
Published: March 2011

Je suis très reconnaissant au Dr. M. A. Stein de m'avoir confié l'étude de la plupart des documents sanscrits qu'il a découverts au cours de sa seconde expédition en Asie Centrale, au prix de quels labeurs, et grâce à quelle ingéniosité prudente et hardie, il nous a permis, avec autant d'humour que de modestie, de le deviner.
“Genitive–Accusative” in Marāṭhi
Authors: Laddu T. K.
Published: March 2011

Dr. Lesný (pp. 179–82 of the Journal for January) appears to raise three objections to my criticism on his first note: (1) that my derivations are doubtful, (2) that he meant by genitive that case which Marāṭhī grammarians call dative or accusative, and (3) that he is correct in maintaining what he had said in his first note about the use of animate and inanimate objects of a transitive verb. And he sums up by informing me that Marāṭhī prose of to-day differs from Marāṭhī poetry of the thirteenth century. Will you allow me to offer my final remarks on the subject?
XXVIII Chinese Writing in the Chou Dynasty in the Light of Recent Discoveries
Authors: Hopkins L. C.
Published: March 2011

It is the aim of the following paper to present to the readers of this Journal the problem of the origin of Chinese writing as it appears at the opening of the historical period in the ninth century b.c., and to give some account of the new light thrown upon the subject by recent discoveries in North China. It is also my hope to show that there are reasons for endeavouring to stir an interest in this question of origin, and some grounds for defining, as clearly as present conditions allow, the main features of what is already known of the problem, and indicating the lines along which fruitful investigation must advance. Especially valuable it should be to investigators of other primitive systems of writing to have a working knowledge of the rise and progressive changes of a script, probably of very ancient origin, certainly claiming a continuous history of 3,600 years, still in vigorous activity, betraying no signs of impending decay. The facts of such a life-history, properly ascertained and appreciated, might well contribute some illuminating sidelights or useful suggestions on analogous inquirics.
III. Yasna XXX as the Document of Dualism
Authors: Mills Lawrence
Published: March 2011

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.
IX. Description of the Province of Fārs, in Persia, at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century a.d.
Authors: Le Strange G.
Published: March 2011

This district takes its name from Dārā [Darius] the Great, son of King Bahman ibn Isfandiyār.

Dārābjird.—This city was founded by Dārā, son of Bahman. It was built circular as though the line of circumference had been drawn with compasses. A strong fortress stood in the centre of the town, surrounded by a ditch kept full of water, and the fortress had four gates. But now the town lies all in ruins, and nought remains except the wall and the ditch. The climate here is that of the hot region, and there are date-palms. The streams of running water are of bad quality. A kind of bitumen [mūmīyā] is found [near Dārābjird] at a place up in the mountain, which bubbles up and falls drop by drop. Also there is a rock-salt found in these parts which is of seven colours where it comes to the surface of the ground.
XI. Documents Sanscrits de la Seconde Collection M. A. Stein
Authors: Poussin L. De La Vallée
Published: March 2011

MS. sur papier; slanting brāhmī; 12 folios. Voir JRAS. 1911, p. 762.

On remarquera la fréquente confusion de la sonore et de la sourde gena = kena, dv = tv (xxx, 34), spantati = spandati (xxxi, 2), aṅguśena = aṅkuśena; yoniśas tvijam = yoniṣo dvijam (xxxi, 5), ja = ca (ii, 5), nipādinaḥ = nipādinaḥ (xxxi, 1), edaṃ = etān, tāvati = dhāvati (xxxi, 33), etc.
XIV. Jātakas at Bharaut
Authors: Hultzsch E.
Published: March 2011

Since my publication of the Bharaut inscriptions the Indian Antiquary, vol. 21, p. 225 ff., Professor von Oldenburg has subjected the Bharaut sculptures to a careful examination in a Russian article which Professor Lanman has made generally accessible by an English translation in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 18, p. 183 ff. Professor von Oldenburg succeeded in tracing in the Pāli Jātaka book three of the Bharaut bas-reliefs which had not previously been identified. The references to four other jātakas could not be given in my first list, because at the time when it was drawn up vol. 6 of the Jātaka book had not yet been published. The same volume enabled me to restore conjecturally one of the Bharaut inscriptions, while repeated perusal of vol. 5 yielded explanations of two bas-reliefs which had remained unidentified.
XVI. The Chinese Bronze known as the “Bushell Bowl” and its Inscription
Authors: Hopkins L. C.
Published: March 2011

In a recent paper in this Journal on “Chinese Writing in the Chou Dynasty in the light of Recent Discoveries”, I expressed the hope that I should be able shortly to publish in the Journal a list of the characters contained in the Chinese inscription of the Bushell Bowl, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, with their Lesser Seal equivalents, and some additional forms besides.
VII. Tokharian Prātimokṣa Fragment
Authors: Levi Sylvain
Published: March 2011

[This fragment, as well as a number of others, written in he Tokhari language and in Slanting Gupta characters, were forwarded to me from Simla by the Government of India, in April, 1907. In the forwarding letter it was stated that they had been “found at Jigdalik and Kaya, near Kuchar”, by a man of Kuchar, called Sahib Ali. From Sahib Ali's report it appears that Jigdalik lies one day's march from Baï, and that the manuscript fragments were dug out by him from what he calls “a house”, situated in “the hills” near Jigdalik. The term “house” is applied by the natives of Eastern Turkestan to what we call a stūpa, or shrine, see Sir Aurel Stein's Ancient Khotan, vol. i, p. 483. The name Jigdalik, as M. Pelliot informs me, is not uncommon in Chinese Turkestan, and signifies simply a place of oleasters. The Jigdalik fragments will be published in my projected series of volumes of Manuscripts from Eastern Turkestan; but as there will still be some delay in the issue of the first volume, I gladly accept the hospitality of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society to give an early specimen of Professor Sylvain Lévi's careful edition of them. A glossary of the fragment, as well as linguistic notes, by Professor Meillet, are now in my hands, and will be published with the fragment itself and its facsimile in the forthcoming first volume of my series.—R. H.]
XII. Note on a Tamil Inscription in Siam
Authors: Hultzsch E.
Published: March 2011

At Mr. Sewell's request the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society sent me an impression of this inscription which had been made over to the Society some years ago by Colonel Gerini. At the same time M. Finot placed at my disposal a photograph of the back of the impression, which is reproduced on the accompanying Plate.
XV Contributions to Singhalese Chronology
Authors: Hultzsch E.
Published: March 2011

This article is an attempt to establish critically the synchronisms which appear to exist between the mediaeval portion of the Ceylon chronicle Mahāvaṁsa and the results of South Indian epigraphical research. The definite dates to which a number of Chōḷa and Pāṇḍya kings can now be assigned are due to the laborious and difficult calculations of my late friend Kielhorn, while several of the synchronisms were discovered by another old friend and fellow-worker, Rai Bahadur V. Venkayya, the melancholy news of whose sudden death at Madras on November 21, 1912, reached me while I was collecting materials for this article from his learned Reports.
XIX Documents Sanscrits de la Seconde Collection M. A. Stein
Authors: de la Vallée Poussin Louis
Published: March 2011

[The fragments transliterated below by Professor de la Vallée Poussin, together with a number of smaller morsels, formed part of a large birch-bark pothī, of which each page contained ten or eleven lines and measured about 39 × 7 cm., and were found at Khadalik. The characters are of the upright Gupta type.]
The Date of Kaniska
Authors: Thomas F. W.
Published: March 2011

The date of Kaniṣka is not a subject which I should have expected to be discussing in public. It is one of those long-standing problems in regard to which one at an early stage conceives an opinion or receives a bias, but which, either for lack of decisive evidence, or because the mind, after considering many conflicting views, is incapable of an act of faith, one leaves in the sphere of things unsettled. I myself should have been well content that the finishing stroke should be dealt by the spade, which even now is probing the ruins of Taxilā. Moreover, at the time when Mr. Kennedy first propounded to me his conclusions, I was fresh from the perusal of Professor Oldenberg's paper, which seemed to have said the last word in the discussion. If we have now invited a debate, and one at closer range than a trimestrial journal allows, the responsibility rests with Mr. Kennedy's extensive articles, their confident tone, and the interest which they have evoked.
XXIII. Sumerian and Georgian: A Study in Comparative Philology
Authors: Tseretheli M.
Published: March 2011

Since Sumerian studies began Assyriologists and other philologists have tried to compare Sumerian with some known language or group of languages, and thus to solve definitely the important problem of the origin of the primitive civilization of Chaldæa. That the Sumerian race and Sumerian language really existed, and Sumerian was spoken in Babylonia in the most remote epoch, that this language was neither Aryan nor Semitic but an agglutinative language—these are facts now established by the researches of earlier and modern Assyriologists and recognized even officially by science. J. Halévy's theory, denying the very existence of the Sumerians and their language, has now no followers among serious scientists, and the study of Sumerian is based upon such methods and facts that the appearance of another Halévy raising anew “the Sumerian question”, and bringing some new arguments in order to support his theory, seems, if not impossible, at least very improbable.
XXVI. Accent and Prosody in Bengali, etc.
Authors: Anderson J. D.
Published: March 2011

I venture to make the following suggestions, based on some recent studies of Bengali accentuation and prosody. The subject is difficult, and, to save space and words, I state quite tentative conclusions in rather too positive terms. But my statements are merely suggestions.
XXVIII. Apabhramśa according to Mārkaṇḍēya and “Ḍhakkī” Prakrit
Authors: Grierson G. A.
Published: March 2011

Mārkaṇḍēya in his Prākṛtasarvasva, i, 4, discusses the various kinds of Apabhraṁśa. In the commentary he quotes an unknown author (see Pischel, Pr. Gr., § 3, note 1) who gives a list of no less than twenty-seven, but he says that really there are only three, Nāgara, Vrācaḍa, and Upanāgara. He does not consider the others as different dialects, because their variations from the Standard are very slight.
XXIX. Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha
Authors: Pargiter F. E.
Published: March 2011

The stories about Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha and their contest are often narrated and alluded to in Sanskrit writings, and are intimately connected in ancient tradition with two kings of Ayodhyā, Trayyāruṇa and his son Satyavrata Triśaṅku. They are sometimes mixed up, especially in brahmanic descriptions, with extraordinary and marvellous incidents, but are narrated in the course of the genealogies of Ayodhyā and Kānyakubja in some of the Purāṇas in as simple and natural a manner as if they were plain ‘historical’ tradition. Such being their character in the Purāṇas, it is not unreasonable to examine them as such, review them according to ordinary feelings and conduct, and see whether, when so scrutinized, they may not yield a natural and probable explanation of a series of incidents that have attracted much attention, both ancient and modern. This has been my endeavour in this paper, and the results appear to reconstruct a most interesting chapter in ancient Indian traditional ‘history’.
VII. Earliest Indian Traditional “History”
Authors: Pargiter F. E.
Published: March 2011

Much has been done by scholars to elucidate the history of the earliest times in India, based principally on the Veda and the brahmanical literature, and the deductions of philology. Kṣatriya tradition, especially in the genealogical accounts, contains a great quantity of quasi-historical matter, but has been generally discarded as meriting little or no trust. It is, however, worthy of attention and examination, since it tells us what the ancient Aryans knew or believed about the earliest ‘events’ in India.
VIII. Gleanings from Shabara
Authors: Jacob George A.
Published: March 2011

It is passing strange that this ancient and interesting author, whose exposition of the Mīmāṃsā sūtras is the oldest now extant, should be so much neglected by modern students of Sanskrit. Yet one would suppose that a writer who offered an interpretation of Vedic ritual, and who preceded Sāyaṇa by nearly twelve centuries, would never fail to receive attention from students of the most ancient literature of India. But there are others to whom a good knowledge of Mīmāṃsā is of importance. It is no exaggeration to say that, without that knowledge, it would be impossible rightly to comprehend the larger treatises on Vedānta—notably those of the very learned Appaya Dīkṣita, in which very lengthy disquisitions on Mīmāṃsā topics abound — or even Jayanta Bhaṭṭa'sNyāyamanjarī.
X. The Vākāṭaka Dynasty of Berār in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries A.C.
Authors: Smith Vincent A.
Published: March 2011

The Vākāṭaka Dynasty, of which the very name and existence had been utterly forgotten for many centuries, was brought to the knowledge of students of ancient Indian history by the publication in 1836 of a copper-plate grant from the Central Provinces. Since that date a few more inscriptions on stone or copper have been discovered at various times and places, and the little known about the dynasty is derived solely from those records. No extant coin can be assigned to the Vākāṭaka princes, who must have used as currency the monetary issues of other powers. We are ignorant of the derivation of the name Vākāṭaka, and are unable to say whether the kings were indigenous or of foreign descent. Nor do we know for certain the locality in which the dynasty took its rise. It is not mentioned in literature, although it seems to be the subject of an obscure allusion in the Purāṇas, which contain in the section dealing with the dynasties of Vidiśā, etc., the passage translated by Mr. Pargiter from his eclectic text, as follows:—

“Hear also the future kings of Vidiśā. Bhogin, son of the Naga king Seṣa, will be king, conqueror of his enemies' cities, a king who will exalt the Nāga family. Saducandra, and Candrāṁśawho will bea second Nakhavant, then Dhanadharman, and Vaṅgara is remembered as the fourth. Then Bhūtinanda will reign in the Vaidiśakingdom.
XI. Khotan Studies
Authors: Konow Sten
Published: March 2011

About twelve years ago Dr. Hoernle published a series of ancient documents written in Brāhmī characters and an Iranian language. There was and is some uncertainty about the exact spot or spots where they were found. Some of them had been bought “from a Khotan trader Badruddīn, who could or would give no information”. Others were said to have been dug out from a buried town near Kuchar. The interpretation of these documents has not advanced much since they were edited, though we now know that they are written in the same tongue which is used in numerous fragments and MSS. found in Eastern Turkistan, and which has been variously designated North Aryan, East Iranian, Tokharī, and Khotanese. The alphabet in which these documents are written, on the other hand, is much better known now than twelve years ago. Dr. Hoernle has published tables found in Central Asia and containing complete alphabets, so that we are now relatively well informed about the value of the different signs. Moreover, a comparison with other manuscript finds from Turkistan has shown that some signs were not from the beginning correctly transliterated. In the present connexion it is of importance that we now know that two different signs were originally confounded and invariably transliterated ñ. One of them, however, denotes anr-sound, and is now usually transcribedrr.
XII. The Kalās
Authors: Venkatasubbiah A. , Müller E.
Published: March 2011

The present article was originally intended to be a supplement to Dr. Venkatasubbiah's dissertation on the Kalas, presented to the philosophical faculty of the University of Berne in 1910 and printed at Madras in 1911. Considering, however, the possibility that a certain number of European Sanskritists may not be acquainted with this dissertation, we believe it necessary to repeat here the most important points which have been discussed there, hoping that in this form the article may be understood by all scholars interested in these matters.–E. M.
XXVII Central Asian Studies
Authors: Lévi Sylvain
Published: March 2011

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.
V The Archives of an Oracle
Authors: Hopkins L. C.
Published: March 2011

Meagre and disappointing as it seems, the collection of phrases and sentences that follows has been extorted from the nearly nine hundred specimens of inscribed bone and horn fragments in my possession only after close study during six years. Whether the result is worth the work and the time, it is useless now to ask. But such as they are, I have desired to put before other workers the deciphered extracts from these unusual records for two reasons. The first is that I seem to have reached the limit attainable by my own individual efforts. The second and especial reason is that if other students of Chinese would consent to devote some attention to the texts now presented and translated, I am confident that numerous difficulties would be cleared up, not a few fruitful suggestions elicited, and—it would be too foolish to think otherwise—various errors and ignorances exposed. If all or any of these consequences should follow, much needed light would fall on dark places, and some misty uncertainties be dissipated. I feel fairly convinced that there are things of real interest concealed in the legends on these objects, and I suspect also some surprises.
X. The Deity of the Crescent Venus in Ancient Western Asia
Authors: Offord Joseph
Published: March 2011

A Cuneiform tablet in the British Museum referring to the celebrated deity of the Babylonians, Merodach (who is identified with the planet Jupiter), states that he possessed four attendant dogs, and gives their names. It is possible that these represent the four largest of the planet's moons, because instances have been known of these having been discerned with the naked eye.
XIV. The Credit due to the Book entitled “The Voyages and Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo into the East Indies”
Authors: Smith Vincent A.
Published: March 2011

Some time ago when I bought for a good price a good copy of the 1669 edition of the English version of Mandelslo's Travels, my impression was that I had secured a rare book recording the experiences in India of a learned and observant traveller in the reign of Shāhjahān. In fact, I believed the current legend concerning the high value of Mandelslo's writings as given by Mr. Oaten, whose words may be quoted, so far as necessary—

“As a source of information on the political or social condition of the country, however, neither Methold nor Bruton can compare with Albert de Mandeslo [sic]. Murray truly says that he was one of the most active and intelligent travellers who have ever visited India. The editor of Harris's collection of travels says no less truly that he had ‘all the qualities requisite in such a guide, Knowledge, Diligence, and Fidelity’. That these encomiums are justified a very slight acquaintance with his book is sufficient to show. Being a scholar and a gentleman, and one already equipped with a considerable amount of knowledge about India, he entered on his travels with a stock of information which was calculated to render his observations peculiarly intelligent.”
XXV. Ethnographic Notes from Marsa Maṭrūḥ
Authors: Bates Oric
Published: March 2011

Marsa Maṭruḥ, the classical Parætonium, lies about 150 land-miles west of Alexandria, on the Marmaric coast. During the winter of 1913–14, with the help of my friend W. J. Harding King, Esq., I made a preliminary archæological survey of the locality, and collected a few notes on the modern inhabitants.
V. Notes on the Edicts of Aśoka
Authors: Thomas F. W.
Published: March 2011

In recurring, briefly, to the consideration of this expression we may take with us the fact that in the Sārnāth inscription the verb vivāsāy- has been shown to bear the meaning “cause to dwell away”, to dwell, that is, in a place which is anāvāsa, “not a residence,” in the particular case “not a residence of a community of monks”.
XIII. The Lady of the Weir
Authors: Brown R. Grant
Published: March 2011

The Kyauksè district is at once the smallest and the richest in Upper Burma. Two rivers, the Zawgyi and the Panlaung, enter it from the mountains in the Shan States to the east, and from them spring a number of canal systems. These existed long before the British annexed the country, and tradition ascribes them to the great king Nawyӑta (Anuruddha), who reigned from 1044 to 1077 a.d.
XVI. The Death of Hēmū in 1556, after the Battle of Pānīpat
Authors: Smith Vincent A.
Published: March 2011

No incident in Akbar's life is better known or more universally accepted than the supposed refusal of “the spirited boy” to strike with his sword the captive and wounded Hēmū after the second battle of Pānīpat in November, 1556.

This is the anecdote as told by Elphinstone, partly after Ferishta (Firishta):—

“Bairām was desirous that Akbar should give him the first wound, and thus, by imbruing his sword in the blood of so distinguished an infidel, should establish his right to the envied title of ‘Ghāzī’ or ‘Champion of the Faith’; but the spirited boy refused to strike a wounded enemy, and Bairām, irritated by his scruples, himself cut off the captive's head at a blow.”
XXI. The Eight Immortals
Authors: Yetts W. Perceval
Published: March 2011

One of the subjects beloved of Chinese artists is a venerable figure in an attitude of profound reverie shown as part of a wild and romantic scene of forest, crag, and torrent. Sometimes below his rocky hermitage there stretches a plain with far-off shadowy outlines of ordinary mortal habitations, of which the faint remoteness suggests the gulf separating him from mundane cares and vanities. Looking at such a one, instinct tells us that he feels, to use the words of Shelley, “as if his nature were resolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were resolved into his being.” He belongs to a strange race, variously named by Western writers Fairies, Immortals, Genii, Rishi. And here may it be remarked in parenthesis that neither “fairy” nor “immortal” is a term that exactly fits them; nor, indeed, does Arabic jinn or Sanskrit ṛishi. They are a race peculiarly Chinese and apart. Hence it would seem most appropriate to call them by their native name hsien, now commonly written , a pictogram representing perfectly the essence of their cult—the primitive contact of man with Nature typified by the mountains. Hsien, therefore, they will be termed in these pages.
V. The Language of the Kassites
Authors: Pinches Theophilus G.
Published: March 2011

In the monograph by Professor Sayce and myself, The Tablet from Yuzgat in the Liverpool Institute of Archœology (I believe the document is now in the Louvre), which forms vol. xi of the Asiatic Society Monographs (see pp. 15–19), I discussed the possibility of Kassite being a language more or less akin to Hittite. In dealing with this question, I made use of the well-known tablet discovered by the late Hormuzd Rassam in 1882, and published in transcription by Professor Fried. Delitzsch in his Die Sprache der Kossäer (Leipzig, 1884). To all appearance this important inscription has never been printed in the original character, and as its appearance is held to be desirable, I now place before the British public the copy which I made in 1882 or 1883.
VII. A Cosmological Tract by Pseudo-Dionysius in the Syriac Language
Authors: Furlani Giuseppe
Published: March 2011

The small cosmological tract I here publish, and which is attributed to Dionysius, Bishop of Athens, I have taken from the MS. marked 7192 Rich., now Add. 7192, of the British Museum. This is a MS. in quarto on vellum, containing not more than seventy-six folios, and belongs probably, so far as we can judge from the good esṭrangĕlô character in which it is written, to the eighth century. The treatise begins on f. 57c—there are two columns of thirty-one lines on every page—and ends on f. 63b at the bottom. It is followed by another tract from the hand of the same author—the contents and the style, and especially the concluding lines which are nearly identical to the last ones of the tract we publish, at least point to the same author—that bears the following inscription:

It is an anti-astrological and anti-magical tract, as it undertakes to demonstrate that divination by means of the “stars, the zodiacal signs, the horoscopes, the fortunes, the chances, the hours, the convulsions, the auguries, the divinations, and all the deception of the Chaldæans, sons of deception” is not to be relied upon, and is contradictory to the facts that daily observation affords us.
XVI. The Persian Manuscripts of the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, K.C.I.E.
Authors: Browne Edward G.
Published: March 2011

It is doubtful whether there has existed in our time any European who possessed so extensive and so profound a knowledge of Persia as the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, who died at his house at Fenstanton, Hunts, in his 70th year, on June 16, 1916. And he was one of those generous scholars who, while seemingly taking more pleasure in the acquisition than in the publication of knowledge, waa ever ready to place at the disposal of all students the rich stores of his learning. To this generosity Lord Curzon, in the Preface to his valuable work on Persia (London, 1892, vol. i, pp. xii–xiii), bears eloquent testimony in the following words:—

“Of these coadjutors the first, alikein authority and in the extent of his assistance, has been General A. Houtum-Schindler, a gentleman who, after filling many important posts in the Persian Service, is now acting as adviser to the Imperial Bank of Persia in Teheran. To the advantage of long residence in the country he adds the erudition of a scholar and the zeal of a pioneer. He has personally revised nearly every page of these volumes, besides supplying me with much of my original information; and I tremble to think how many errors they might have contained but for his generous and never-failing cooperation. Few men so excellently qualified to write a first-rate book themselves would have lent such unselfish exertion to improve the quality of another man's work.”
I. Akbar's Land-Revenue System as described in the “Āin-i-Akbari”
Authors: Moreland W. H. , Ali A. Yusuf
Published: March 2011

This paper attempts to bring together the facts disclosed in somewhat disjointed fashion in the Āīn-i-Akbari so as to present as nearly as possible a complete view of the theory of the land revenue held at the headquarters of Akbar's administration. How far that theory accorded with the actual practice in the villages is another question, and one on which the work of Abul Fazl cannot be expected to throw light; but it is perhaps fair to assume that in the sixteenth century, as in the twentieth, practice tended to approximate to theory, and that if we make some obvious reservations and allowances we can take the theory as a trustworthy guide. So far as the writers are aware, this task has not previously been carried out, and it is not difficult to show that the partial accounts of the system contained in standard textbooks of Indian history are marked by numerous errors or omissions. The importance of Akbar's reign in the political and economic history of India appears to afford sufficient justification for an attempt to restate the official account of what is universally regarded as one of his greatest administrative achievements, a correct understanding of which is necessary for the appreciation of much of the historical material recorded in the Āin.
IX. The Value of Money at the Court of Akbar
Authors: Moreland W. H.
Published: March 2011

In the Journal for October, 1917 (p. 815), I discussed some of the material available for the study of wages and prices in the latter part of Akbar's reign, and offered the tentative conclusions that, while a much wider basis is desirable for a final judgment, (1) we may take the rupee to have been worth at the Imperial capital about seven times as much grain as in the years 1910–12, (2) on the same basis we may regard urban wages as having been worth sotaewhere about the same amount of grain at the two periods. I have since been enabled to extend the inquiry to certain other commodities, which make, it possible to indicate provisionally and in general terms what money was actually worth to the population of the Imperial capital. The results apply directly only to this population, but they also have some bearing on the economic conditions prevailing over a wider area in Northern India.
XI. The Babylonian Conception of the Logos
Authors: Langdon S.
Published: March 2011

In Greek philosophy the word λόγος, which by derivation and usage meant speech, discourse, spoken word, assumed at an early period in the history of Greek thought the meaning reason, thought, mind. It is so employed, apparently, first by Heraclitus of the Ionian school at Ephesus. There seems to be in the region of purely Greek thought and religion no conception of λόγος or uttered word of the gods which could have suggested its identification with universal reason, first principle and cause of all things as variously employed in Greek philosophy. Rumour was called Ὄσσα Διóς ἄγγελος, “Rumour the messenger of Zeus,” who goes about stirring up strife. And she is the messenger or dame rumour, Ὄσσα δ'ἄρ' ἄγγελος, who hastens swiftly with evil news, the Fama of Roman mythology. We must suppose, if the Ionian philosophers identified Word with cosmic reason and first principle, that they were induced and influenced by some well-known semi-philosophical use of the term “Word of the gods” as the personification of divine agency. It is wholly inconceivable that the Greek language permitted a sudden transformation of one of its most ancient and perfectly understood words without adequate cause. The etymology and ordinary meaning of λóγος afford no remote suggestion of a divine agent, a first principle. The philosophers certainly did not seize upon it arbitrarily for the most important term in the expression of their thought.
Corrigenda
Authors: Pinches T. G.
Published: March 2011

Correction in Book-notice, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, July and October, 1918, p. 631:—

Owing to two of the printers' characters having fallen out at the ends of the third and second lines from below, the translation of the Babylonian tablet there given is somewhat confused. I therefore repeat it here:—

“A field, as much as there is, a field of sesame and grain, the field of Ḫadi-wamer-Šamaš, Rammānu-šarri-ili and Ḫadi-wamer-Šamaš have hired from Ḫadi-wamer-Šamaš, the lord of the field, as a (field of) partnership, for a year.”

Portions of a phrase omitted in compiling the Book-notice have also been inserted.

Correction in the JRAS. for October, 1917:—

p. 731, in the last line but one of the Translation, for “As we would not disobey thee”, read “So as not to disobey (?) thee”.

pp. 732–3, strike out “In all probability”, etc., to the end of the paragraph.
VIII. The Legend of the Divine Lovers: Enlil and Ninlil
Authors: Pinches Theophilus G.
Published: March 2011

In the March issue of the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1911, I published a paper entitled “Enlil and Ninlil, the Older Bel and Beltis”, one of a series of papers dealing with the gods of Babylonia from unnoticed or unusual points of view. In this contribution to the subject of Babylonian mythology appears, among other things, a transcription and translation of a British Museum tablet dealing with these deities as the “youthful hero and handmaid” of the Babylonian city of Niffur (Niffer, also, it is said, pronounced Noufar), identified by the Hebrews of Rabbinical times with the Calneh of the 10th chapter of Genesis.
The Historical Position of Ramananda
Authors: Farquhar J. N.
Published: March 2011

I am glad my paper in the Journal for April, 1920, on the above subject has drawn from Sir George Grierson and Mr. Sītā Rām their interesting articles in the October and April numbers.
Wahm in Arabic and its Cognates
Authors: Macdonald D. B.
Published: March 2011

It may safely be said that every one who has had to do with technical Arabic has had difficulty with wahm and its cognates. Some recent investigations have led me to examine the meanings of these in detail and I endeavour in this paper to give my results. It will be understood that this is not a complete lexicographical handling of the whole root, but only an attempt to discover the more technical uses of some of its phases. In the arrangement of the material I fear that I have not always avoided logical cross-division; but the subject is complicated and will call for reading backward as well as forward. Also I make no attempt to trace the origin of these Arabic psychological conceptions, whether in Greek, Syriac, or elsewhere, or to compare them with any parallel conceptions in modern psychology. Such few references as I may make, of the one kind or the other, are simply to illumine wahm itself.
Data for Dating a Tale in the Nights
Authors: Popper W.
Published: March 2011

According to the Breslau edition of the Nights (vol. ii, p. 11), Nûr ad-Dîn ‘Alî, after his quarrel with his brother Shams ad-Dîn Muḥammad, leaves Cairo in the morning, and arrives at Bilbais at mid-day, then at in the evening. For Macnaghten (vol. i, p. 151) reads ; but there can be no doubt that the original reading was , as will be shown. According to Breslau, Nûr ad-Dîn at sleeps in the , “ post-horse station.” Historically, a place called appears in the Mamlûk postal service as the next station north of Bilbais on the route out of Cairo, and corresponding exactly to the of the tale (e.g. Qalqashandî, ed. 1919, vol. xiv, p. 376); it was at as-Sa‘îdîya that two roads branched respectively to Damietta and Gazza.
A Hymn to Ishtar as the Planet Venus and to Idin-Dagan as Tammuz
Authors: Langdon S.
Published: March 2011

Again the rich collection of Sumerian literary tablets, discovered at Nippur, has contributed splendid religious texts. Professor Chiera's Sumerian Religious Texts contains seventy-two plates of elegantly copied Sumerian religious and mythological documents preserved in the Nippur Collection of the Museum of Stambul, where I copied fifty-four similar tablets and a large number of incantation texts in 1913. Dr. Chiera has found in Constantinople a surprisingly large number of well-preserved tablets of most valuable contents. I confine myself here to the well-preserved six-column tablet, Ni. 2487, identical in size and material arrangement to the large epical tablet, Ni. 4561, in Philadelphia, published by the writer in Publications of the Babylonian Section, University Museum, Philadelphia, vol. x, No. 1, and re-edited in a French edition, Le Poème Sumérien du Paradis, Paris, 1919. The Nippur Collection has already contributed a large number of these fine six-column zagsal or epical texts, copied by Poebel (PBS. v) and by the writer (PBS. x, Nos. 1–3).
Some Poems in the Sabzawari Dialect
Authors: Ivanow W.
Published: March 2011

It is one of the most popular devices of wits and humorists of all nations to make use of various slang expressions, dialectical or rustic sentences, or local words in order to add to the “fun” in their narrative. Persians are no exception to this. Moreover, educated people regard all the numerous local dialects of Iran as unwritten languages and in their writings occasionally make use of them, but only for such facetious purposes. Peasants and the less educated people strive to use high-flown diction in their correspondence, and even in their songs an imitation of this appears instead of their native dialects.
The Phonetic Weakness of Terminational Elements in Indo-Aryan
Authors: Turner R. L.
Published: March 2011

1. Generally speaking, two conditions rule the development of Indo-Aryan consonants, when considered by themselves in contact only with vowels. If initial, they are maintained; if intervocalic, they are voiced, opened, and in many cases altogether disappear.
The “Ahurian” and “Daevian” Vocabularies in the Avesta
Authors: Gray Louis H.
Published: March 2011

Within the last quarter of a century two serious attempts have been made to explain the fact that the Avesta uses one set of words for beings belonging to the creation of Ahura Mazda and another for those formed by Aura Mainyu. The former of these theories was advanced by Leo Frachtenberg (“Etymological Studies in Ormazdian and Ahrimanian Words in Avestan,” in Spiegel Memorial Volume, Bombay, 1908, pp. 269–89), and the latter by Hermann Güntert (“Ueber die ahurischen und daēvischen Ausdrücke im Avesta, eine semasiologische Studie,” in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, philbsophisch-historische Klasse, 1914, Abhandlung 13).
Fragment of an Incantation Series, DT. 57.
Authors: Langdon S.
Published: March 2011

I Copied this fragment in 1919, and discovered that it is the text erroneously cited by Delitzsch in his Assyrisches Handwörterbuch as DT. 59. It contains so many important contributions to Sumerian and Accadian lexicography, that its publication in extenso is desirable. Its contents are similar to the Shurpu series, and I suggest that it is the still missing first tablet of that series. Zimmern, who is the editor of the Shurpu series, suggested in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. 30, 187, that either CT. 17, 34–5 (restored by him in ZA. 28, 75–80) or Craig, Religious Texts, 56–9, is the missing first tablet. Clearly DT. 57 has more claim to that distinction by reason of its similarity with the other tablets of the Shurpu series.
Is the Nyayapravesa by Dinnaga?
Authors: Tucci Giuseppe
Published: March 2011

The Nyāyapraveśa with the commentary of Haribhadra has been published in the Gaekwad's Oriental Series, together with a careful comparative study of the two Tibetan translations by my friend Vidhuśekhara Shāstrī. Both translations presuppose the same original, but the first (T) (Cordier, Catal., vol. iii, p. 435, n. 7) has been translated from the Sanskrit, while the second (T) is a translation from the Chinese of Yuan Chwang (Tib.: T'aṅ Sam Tsaṅ). The title of the work in the Sanskrit text is Nyāyapraveśasūtra: in this the word sūtra seems to be out of place, and it would be better to substitute the Chinese lun, śāstra, which is much more correct, and which is to be found also in the index of the bsTan-ạGyur: Bstan.bcos.rigs.pa.la.ạjug.pa: nyāyapraveśa-śāstra. (Cf. Haribhadra's Vṛtti, p. 9: nyāyapraveśakākhyaśāstram.) According to the Tibetan colophon of T1 the title of the book is given as pramāṇanyāyapraveśaprakaraṇa; but as it often happens in the Tibetan titles, this is probably a later restoration based on the Tibetan itself. If we have recourse to the commentary by Kwei-chi () we should be inclined to interpret the ts'ad ma of the Tibetan not as pramāṇa, but as ts'ad. mai. rig. pa: pramāṇavidyā, hetuvidyā: in fact the Chinese commentator gives us in transcription the Sanskrit title of the book in this way: ; in Sanskrit, hei tu—fei t'o—na ye—po lo fei she—she sa tan lo.
Mitlani
Authors: Bork Ferdinand
Published: March 2011

Im Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oktober, 1926, hat Hannes Skoeld eine Arbeit “Sur la lettre en langue Mitanni” veröffentlicht.

Ich bekenne, dass ich kein Bedürfnis fühle, darauf zu antworten, denn was Skoeld schrieb, kann nur sckreiben, wer der Frage der Entzifferung unbekannter Sprachen sehr ferne steht, d.h. also, wer über meine Mitani-Studien kein Urteil haben kann. Aber zu Nutze und Frommen der Anderen, gerade derer, die sich darüber kein Urteil anmassen, und die doch aus den Aeusserungen scheinbar oder wirklich Urteilsberechtigter sich allmählich selbst ein Urteil erfühlen wollen, halte ich es doch für meine Pflicht zu antworten. Es soll möglichste Klarheit gewonnen werden, damit die Sache gefördert werde.
The Unknown Co-Founders of Buddhism: A Sequel
Authors: Davids C. A. F. Rhys
Published: March 2011

There is yet another man, whose original message to his fellow-men has been woven into the earliest teachings we call Buddhism, but whose name his age and after-ages have let die. Not in the first utterances ascribed to the Sakyan founder of the movement, nor in the last things which he is represented as emphasizing and enjoining as teachings do we find this original message. We do not know when, in the forty and odd years of the founder's mission, this lost voice began to make itself heard in the same area of missionary work. We do not know when, not the teacher but his teaching was taken over as part of the stock of Sāsana logia. What we do find is a fourfold exercise, moulded into a formula of distinctive character, and emerging here and there in discourses. We also find passing allusions in the scriptures to the four heads of the formula, and we find two at least of the four expanded separately and in a different connexion.
Is there a Gabri Dialect of Modern Persian ?
Authors: Lorimer D. L. R.
Published: March 2011

IN the latest addition to the series of the Kurdisch-Persische Forschungen, Dr. Karl Hadank, of Berlin, has presented Iranian philologists and students of Persian dialects with a work of great interest and importance.

The series was initiated by the late Oskar Mann (ob. 1917) and the present volume, Abt. III, Band I, 1926, as well as its predecessors is based chiefly on the material collected by him. Its main contents are described in the title: Die Mundarten von Khunsâr, Mahallât, Natänz, Nâyin, Sämnân, Sîvänd und Sô-Kohrûd.
Brother Jordan of Sévérac
Authors: Moule A. C.
Published: March 2011

The late Monsieur Henri Cordier's parting gift to students of the East was his edition of the Mirabilia of the Dominican Brother Jordan of Sévérac. This was nothing less than a complete facsimile of the unique manuscript of the Mirabilia which is now in the British Museum. The facsimile is accompanied with an Introduction, a French translation and notes, and a transcript of the Latin text. The transcript is little more than a copy of that of 1839, and students will be wise to read the Latin text from the facsimile. But it is not my purpose here to review or criticize the book. Cordier, like Yule before him, thought it worth while to print in addition to the Mirabilia such other fragments of Jordan's writing as survive. Yule published versions of two letters by Jordan in Cathay and the Way Thither, 1866, and Cordier prints the Latin text of these same letters (one of them twice over) in his Notes Préliminaires and adds to them two texts of another letter which is attributed first to Bartholomew, Custos of Tauris, and secondly to Francis of Pisa. All these texts are taken at second-hand from the Biblioteca Bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa by G. Golubovich, O.S.F. These four letters, which may in fact be reduced to two and part of a third, are concerned with the martyrdom of four Franciscan Brothers at Tana near Bombay in April, 1321. This martyrdom seems to have roused extraordinary interest at the time.