These transcriptions are tentative in character, and are presented with great diffidence. The idea was taken from similar transcriptions of versions of the fable of the North Wind and the Sun in various languages published by the International Phonetic Association in an excellent little pamphlet, The Principles of the International Phonetic Association. They have been done from dictation by persons who habitually speak the respective languages, and the transcriber has checked and in other ways sought to verify them at every step. Nearly all of them were done in Calcutta early in 1919, but they have since been revised. He has not given a table of sounds, as so many languages and dialects (there are some twenty-two in the present paper, including practically all the important languages of India) cannot be well represented all together. The sounds of Sanskrit may be regarded as the norm for all Indian languages, and the ordinary values of these are too well known to be described here.

Bengali is spoken by over 48 millions of people, and naturally it has many dialects. These dialects range themselves into four main groups—Western, North Central, Northern, and Eastern (with a South-Eastern sub-group). The morphological differences between the four groups of dialects are slight, except in the case of the South-Eastern sub-group; but considerable divergences exist in sounds and phonology. These divergences, however, are not so great as to create mutual unintelligibility among speakers of Bengali in different parts of the country, except, perhaps, in the extreme east and south-east. The language which is commonly used in literature is a ‘high’ dialect, which is composite in its inflections, although it is based mainly on West Bengali of several centuries ago. The grammar of this ‘high’ Bengali—the sādhu bhāṣā, as it is called—is archaic, and explains most of the forms of the modern dialects as presenting the prototypes of these latter; but its pronunciation and intonation vary with the different dialectal areas.

The following abbreviations have been used: L. = Lamu dialect, Mb. = Mombasa, Z. = Zanzibar, Kr. = Krapf, M. = Madan, T. = Taylor, H. = Howe (this refers to information or suggestions furnished by the Eev. W. G. Howe—formerly of the United Methodist Mission, Ribe—who has rendered valuable help in the preparation of these notes)

Over Northern India from Delhi to Patna, there is no more popular story than that contained in the cycle of ballads called the Ālh-Khand. This is a long epic poem in twenty-three cantos, composed in the Bunēlī dialect of Western Hindī, telling in rude ballad metre of the exploits of the famous Ālhā and Ūdan, and sung by wandering minstrels known as Ālhā-gānēwālās, or “Singers of Ālhā”. Up to the middle of the last century the cycle does not appear to have ever been reduced to writing, as was the lot of the more elaborate productions of the professional Rajput bards, and few, if any, of its reciters are masters of the whole; but in the eighteen-sixties Mr. C. A. Elliott (afterwards Sir Charles Elliott), when stationed at Farrukhabad, near the ancient city of Kanauj, found three or four of these minstrels, and employed one of them to compile a complete set of the twentythree ballads from their joint memories. The poem thus rescued was printed, and its great popularity is shown by the fact that it has passed through many editions, and can be purchased in the bazaars written either in the Nāgarī or in the Persian character.

A Mongst the Kurds there is found a considerable variety of religions, which has caused unfavourable observers to regard them as idolatrous. Not only are the Christians of several dominations represented among them, but also the Muslims, who form the predominant millah or creed among the peoples of Kurdiâstan in addition to these there are several less important sects, of which by far the most important are the Qizilbâsh and the Yazîdî Kurds.

The Makonde language is spoken by a tribe inhabiting the plateau between the Lukuledi and Ruvuma Rivers (in the southern part of Tanganyika territory), conjointly with the Ndonde, Mavia, Maraba, and (near Newala) the Matambwe, Ngoni, and Makua. With the exception of a short grammatical sketch by the late Bishop Steere and a vocabulary included in Sir H. H. Johnston's Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages, little or nothing relating to this language has hitherto been published. (See Cust, Modern Languages of Africa, ii, 341, where it is called, mistakenly, “Konde.”) A good deal of information as to the above group of tribes is to be found in the works of K. Weule (Negerleben in Ostafrika, 1908, and Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse meiner ethnographischen Forschungsreise, 1908).

Mr. W. W. Skeat, M.A., the leader of the Cambridge University Exploring Expedition to Lower Siam in 1899–1900, has placed in my hands for detailed examination the transcriptions and phonographic records of a number of native songs and chants. They were gathered by him in the States of Patani, Kělantan, and Kědah, and are therefore chiefly worded in the Malay dialect of those States, which presents very interesting phonological differences from Standard Malay. But they also comprise specimens of strange primitive chants, sung by remote and fugitive Negrito tribes (Sěmang and Pangan), and worded, of course, in those languages.

“ THE OPEN COURT ” of March, 1912 (pp. 155 seq.), contains an account by Dr. B. Laufer of an ancient bronze mirror, half of which was found some thirty years ago in Siberia. On the back was a figure of Confucius, with the inscription—

Nothing is more disconcerting to the student of early Muslim history than the way in which Tabarī and the other historians alternate between detailed and comprehensive narrative and jottings of the most meagre and involved nature, filled out, in some cases, by picturesque but obviously legendary tales. These faults, which are to a large degree inherent in the method of compilation from oral tradition, come out most clearly in the narrative of the brilliant series of campaigns by which the Arab general Qutayba ibn Muslim conquered and annexed the lands eastward from Herāt and the Oxus to the Pamīr, during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Walīd I (a.d. 705–15). Thus we are given a fairly sufficient account of the long drawn out operations against Bukhārā, but none of the actual conquest and colonization of the city : much 'of the expeditions against various princes subject to the kingdom of Tukhāristān, but practically nothing of the annexation of Tukhāristān itself.

The historical materials which we have for the prosecution of the above inquiries are scanty, but the conclusions which may be deduced from them may serve in a measure to support an argument based mainly, as it must be, on the general principles of the progress of language and literature and upon analogical reasoning.

In Vol. 1, Part III, of the Bulletin (pp. 1 ff.) Mr. Grant Brown has given a valuable account of the Kadus of Burma, and, after comparing their speech with several other cognate Tibeto-Burman languages, has been unable to fix its exact classification. Perhaps the following notes may help to decide the question.

The Arab Empire of the Umayyad Period is still one of the problems of history. Muslim historians, in spite of their theological prejudice against the reigning house, display a not unnatural undercurrent of pride in its triumphs of conquest. European historians of the period fall into two classes: those who regard the Empire as an organized system of government, carrying on and blending the Roman and Persian traditions, and those who see in it an organized system of exploitation, copying the older administrations only so far as they ministered to the rapacity of the conquerors.

The Turkana language has been studied by Mr. A. C. Hollis (see Sir Charles Eliot, Introduction to Hollis' The Nandi), though his results are apparently unpublished; and by the late Hon. A. Bruce, whose notes appear to have been lost; a short comparative vocabulary is to be found in The Uganda Protectorate, vol. ii, by Sir Harry Johnston.

The subject to which I venture to invite your attention is not altogether new to the members of the Royal Asiatic Society. Three years ago, at a meeting of the Society on 14th March, 1916, with Sir Charles Lyall in the chair, when the Campbell Memorial Gold Medal was awarded to Professor Macdonell, of Oxford, the latter in his reply touched upon the desirability of creating, on behalf of British Sanskrit scholars, some opportunity of study and research in India. “The only remedy,” Professor Macdonell said, “seems to be the establishment of a school of research for Europeans at some centre of Sanskrit learning, preferably Benares, like the School of Classical Archæology at Athens or the French School at Hanoi in Indo-China. It will be a reproach to this country if we cannot establish something of this kind in India, with all our obligations to advance education and learning in connexion with the ancient civilization and literature of the vast Indian Empire.”

In 1907 M. Louis Desplaques described in Le Plateau Central Nigérien a series of large tumuli—pyramids of earth—the burial places of chiefs of a past era. He notes their existence at El Walaji and as far east as Aménaka, near Zinder, on the banks of the Niger near the Bassa rapids, west to Sikassa, and on the banks of the Senegal. On archaeological grounds, supported by a well-known passage from the Arab writer El Behri, he concludes that they were built by “red” or Berber races of the same stratum of population as the ancient inhabitants of the Ghana Empire. “They remain”, he writes, “as the sole witnesses of the activity, the industry, and civilization of these ‘red’ peoples, whose names and real origin we do not know”.

§ 1. The Pahlavi text treated in this article was first published by M. E. BLOCHET from a codex of the Bibliothėque Nationale of Paris—the manuscrit Supplément persan, no. 1216, p. 1—4— in the Revue de L'Histoire des Religions, Paris 1895, vol. 32, pp. 18—23 of the appendix, and translated by him with notes in the same volume of the Revue pp. 233—241. It was published for the second time in the PahlT. II, pp. 109—114 and edited by JAMASP-ASANA (Bombay 1913) with collations from the mss. JE. JJ. MK. and DP.

Although even at the present day nothing is certain in regard to the origin of the Kurds, even less was known to ancient writers, whose accounts are purely mythical. They were, however, generally so little studied that speculation on this question does not seem to have become common until a comparatively late period, and even then to have been almost exclusively confined to eastern scholars.

Dr. O. Rescher is one of the most industrious of Arabic scholars, and in the last few years he has done a large amount of valuable work. During a prolonged residence in Constantinople he devoted his attention to the libraries of Stambul, and he has published descriptions of a large number of the most important manuscripts, especially those relating to poetry, philology, and belles lettres. His descriptions, which form an important contribution to Arabic bibliography, are to be found in various periodicals, such as the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, the Rivista degli Studi Orientali, Le Monde Oriental, the Mélanges de l'Université St. Joseph à Beyrouth, and the Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes. It is scarcely necessary to say that these descriptions have made known to European scholars not a few works the existence of which would otherwise have remained unsuspected. Bibliography, however, is by no means the only branch of learning which has benefited by the activity of Dr. Rescher.

(1) To the Beloved we drank a wine,

With which we were intoxicated,

Ere the vineyard was created.

The Beloved is the Prophet, or the Creator Himself, source of love. The wine is the knowledge and love of the Divinity and the intoxication is ecstasy.