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 Superseded views expressed in the lecture are ignored here.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.”

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 It is necessary for this purpose to quote, however reluctantly, from still unpublished texts, but it is time to make the correction.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.

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 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 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).

The Nanda couplet occurs in the Legend of Sthūlabhadra, which relates to the time of the Nine Nandas, who preceded Candragupta the Maurya. This Legend is recounted by Hemacandra in his Sthavirāvalī Carita, and Jacobi has made a full English abstract of it in his Bibl. Ind. edition of the work (p. 50 foll.). L. Alsdorf has given an account of this Legend in German (Kumārapāla Pratibodha, p. 19 foll.) to accompany the Apabhraṃśa version of his text and in an Appendix has supplemented it with extracts from other works on the subject. The couplet is recorded in Skt., Pkt., Apa., and Gujarati; and as most of the versions can be dated, they are of great linguistic interest. Their value would be still greater if the unknown element of copyists’ errors and emendations could be eliminated. Those which can be detected will be noticed in due course.

To vol. iii, No. 1, of Monumenta Nipponica J. Rahder contributed an article in which he gives a list of consonant alternances and vowel alternances in Japanese including various dialects spoken in Ryūkyū. The importance of an extensive and careful study of such linguistic phenomena cannot be overestimated, for it constitutes the very first step towards the laborious task of grouping Japanese words into word-families, thence tracing them back to their respective roots.

Maewo is the northernmost island eastwards of the double chain of islands in Melanesia known as the New Hebrides. Dr. R. H. Codrington gives a grammar of Maewo in ML., pp. 408–420. The dialect used by him for the grammar was that of Tanoriki, a place some twelve miles from the north end of the island on the west side. This grammar was founded principally on information supplied by native scholars from that part of Maewo in the Melanesian Mission school at Norfolk Island. Codrington also made use of a small edition, 33 pp., of the Book of Common Prayer in the language. The translation of Psalm 100 in ML., p. 419, is taken from that book.

In the seventies and early eighties of the eighteenth century the Secret Committee had shown, as we have seen, an increasing tendency to become subservient to the Ministry, and in consequence the Directors had begun to keep a careful watch on the Committee's activities. Although, in April, 1783, to please Fox they nominated the “Chairs”, Sir Henry Fletcher and Nathaniel Smith, to be the Secret Committee, with authority to conduct the Company's naval and military affairs and to consult with the Ministry, they at the same time cautiously enjoined that such powers should be valid for only one month. These powers were grudgingly renewed monthly until November, when Fox, with the approval of Fletcher, who was one of his best friends and firmest political supporters, produced his India Bills, which sought to destroy the Company's existing home government. That Fletcher had seen and yet silently acquiesced in these revolutíonary Bills was deemed by the majority of the Directors to be a betrayal of his trust as chairman, and they promptly sacked him. So great was the blow to their confidence in the “Chairs” that subsequent to the overthrow of the Coalition in late December they forbade the new Chairmen privately to interview the Ministers unless accompanied by Laurence Sulivan, the senior Director and trusted representative of the Indian interest, the strongest party in the Court.

Burmese music is a virgin field for research. Nobody can bewail this virginity more than myself. To help me there does not seem to exist a single western work on Burmese music though there are such classics as Fox Strangways' on Indian and J. H. Levis' on Chinese music. Many writers on Burma have passed remarks, kind or humorous, on Burmese music. But few have attempted a technical study of it. Nothing Burmese escaped the notice of Sir James George Scott, of course. But I know of only two who left some technical remarks on Burmese music: Paul Edmonds, the author of Peacocks and Pagodas; and P. A. Mariano, in an appendix on Burmese music to that most lovingly produced book Burma by Max and Bertha Ferrars.

The text of this tract is based on two MSS., which I call 0 (old) and M (modern). The first, written in a “Tarassul” hand of the ninth (fifteenth) century, is defective at both ends and lacks one folio between fols. 1 and 2; the second, in a modern hand, was copied from a copy made by Muḥammad Ḥusain-i Garakānī (Shams al-‘Ulamā), who claims to have transcribed it, with corrections, “from a MS. of mixed contents written in a tal‘q hand in the ninth century A.H.” This reference probabliy belongs to 0, for, after I had acquired M, I bought the origina11 fragment of five leaves among the books which had belonged to tide late Shams al-‘Ulamā. The page before fol. 1 and the one after fol. 5 of the fragment must have remained in the original collection, but what happened to the missing folio I cannot say. Instead of the titles and divisions written in the original in red ink, a more adequate system of paragraphs has been introduced into the text.

In BSOS., London, X, 1, pp. 179 ff., Mr. Bernard Lewis has published a paper: “A Jewish Source of Damascus just after the Ottoman Conquest.” On p. 181, note 4, he says. “. A Hebrew transcription of an Arabic word I have not been able to identify …. It is perhaps connected with the Arabic root kafara, to be an infidel”.