The monument at Pl I, until recently called the “Allahabad-Kosam” pillar and attributed to Aśoka, is now known to have been erected before Aśoka came to the throne in 272 B.C. We also know with certainty that its original emblem had been – not a lion, as previously supposed – but the bull of pre-Buddhist, brahmanical religion. Moreover, there is no longer any reason to suppose that it had not always held a position overlooking the confluence of the two sacred rivers, the Gaṇgā and the Yamunā, otherwise known as “the holiest site in India”.

In treating of the Hindú religion, much confusion has arisen from considering all the nations settled in the plains, and ranging over the mountains of Hindustan, from the Himálaya to Cape Comorin, as originally embued with one faith, and following one religious ritual.

The indifference of the ancient Indian to the maintenance of definite chronicles even when a voluminous literature of a philosophical and religious kind existed, has left the historian, apart from meagre foreign accounts, with little written evidence of the course of Indian events other than fanciful epics and legends. Under such circumstances, he has had to utilize to the utmost such deductions as can be drawn from material sources, and among these one of the most important has been the ancient coinage. The aftermath of Alexander's invasion left various Græco-Bactrian kingdoms and principalities extending through Afghanistan and the Punjab as far as Muttra, of which many coins have been found, and these have often proved useful for dating purposes. In this paper, however, investigation is confined to the much more obscure early indigenous coins of the years previous or not long subsequent to the Christian era, with a view to discovering what weight standards are present, and what they imply.

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.

From 1764, when the British position in Bengal was established beyond challenge, until 1842, when the Treaty of Nanking gave Britain the island colony of Hong Kong, the shortest route between British and Chinese territory lay across the Himalaya mountains. Until the Gurkha War of 1814–1816, the southern slopes of the Himalayas and the states that lay along them formed a narrow buffer between British territory and Tibet. As a result of the Gurkha War, British influence was brought right up to the Tibetan border, through the annexation of Kumaon in the western Himalayas, and through the establishment of a vague protectorate over the tiny hill state of Sikkim. Tibet had been evolving into a Chinese dependency since the beginning of the eighteenth century. This process, nearly complete by 1750, reached its final stage in 1792, when Tibet became, to all intents and purposes, an integral part of the Chinese Empire. The British in India were well aware of their proximity to this outpost of the power of the Chinese Emperor. In a period when British dealings with China were confined to trade at a single port, Canton, in conditions that were far from ideal, it would have been most surprising if no attempts had been made to develop Anglo-Chinese relations across the far from impassable barrier of the Himalayas.

In presenting to the Royal Asiatic Society the accompanying two specimens, in crystal, of the Sri Jantra, it will be proper to offer some explanation of the manner in which they came into my hands; of the use to which they are applied by the Hindus; and of the meaning, and apparently great antiquity, of the mysterious symbol of the Double Equilateral Triangle.

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism.

The original home of the founders of the royal dynasties of the Hittites was the country of Kussar. It was of Kussar and Kussar only that Khattusilis, the ancestor of Subbi-luliuwas, the founder of the second dynasty, was king (KB. iii, p. 30); so, too, was “the lord” Labarnas or Tabarnas, the founder of the first dynasty (c. 1900 b.c.). From his death-bed in the city of Kussar Khattusilis I issued his last testament to his son and successor Mursilis I, and the only territorial title of the unnamed “great king” in whom Dr. Forrer is probably right in seeing Mursilis I is “king of Kussari”. The state records carefully preserved the annals of a still earlier monarch, Anittas “king of Kussara”, who describes in them his conquest of the Hittite-land.

For more than three and a half centuries the Bodleian Library at Oxford has possessed three palm-leaf MSS originating from Java, probably the earliest of their kind to be included in a Western public collection. They bear the shelfmarks MS.Jav.b.l (R), MS.Jav.b.2 (R), and MS.Jav.b.3 (R), for which I shall use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 here for convenience sake.

In the relevant published literature, to be referred to below, there exists some uncertainty, not about the identity of the two persons who donated these MSS, but about the question of which of them gave which one. This is true explicitly for MS. no. 3, and by implication for the others. When first examining this MS, I was informed by the then Keeper of Oriental Books that it “was a 17th century gift, either by Andrew James in 1627, or by the Earl of Pembroke in 1629, more probably the latter”. This dual possibility was subsequently adopted in publications about this MS. Only a recent examination of the pertinent data, both published and unpublished, has shown that they do allow of a definite conclusion being reached, as will be demonstrated below.2

In 1922 a collection of four Bhāṇas was published from South Indian Manuscripts under the title of Caturbhāṇī by M. Ramakrishna Kavi and S. K. Ramanatha Sastri. In a short introduction the editors discussed the age and authorship of these works and assigned them varying degrees of antiquity. As the type of dramatic composition in Sanskrit known as bhāṇa, although ancient in origin, had hitherto been represented only by very modern examples, it was naturally a matter of considerable interest and importance for literary history, if the plays should turn out to belong to an early period as the editors claimed.

This article examines the different mechanisms of the circulation of Chinese ceramics in the Middle East during the Abbasid-Chinese ceramic exchange during the eighth–tenth centuries ce. Although trade has been used conveniently to denote the circulation of Chinese wares in the Abbasid Caliphate, it is not the only mechanism that existed. There were also other possible processes of circulation, such as ceramics sent as tributes, diplomatic gifts, and samples, and secondary distribution through looting and pilgrimage. Not all Chinese wares shipped to the Middle East were luxury goods. Different types of Chinese wares had different functions and commercial and aesthetic values in the Middle East. It is an oversimplification to describe the circulation of Chinese wares in the Middle East as merely the result of the luxury goods trade.

This article focuses on the relationship between property developers and architects in colonial Hong Kong in the 1920s to 1930s, identifying a successful collaboration within the architectural development company, the Crédit Foncier d'Extrême-Orient (CFEO). Benefiting from new plots of land made available on the Kowloon Peninsula and the opportunity to plan new neighbourhoods for both Western and Chinese clientele, the directors of CFEO negotiated with their in-house architects regarding land speculation and residential typology preferences while targeting the middle-class market. The company's demolished buildings left a crucial gap in the urban history of Hong Kong and China's treaty ports only recently uncovered through archival research by the author. Drawing upon in-depth primary data research and interviews with the architects’ descendants, this article probes into early twentieth-century residential development in Hong Kong, revealing how certain Western entrepreneurs and architects experimented with unique adaptations of architectural typologies suited to the local environment in the Chinese urban landscape.

The doctrine of the Pratītyasamutpāda is expounded at considerable length in the sixteenth chapter of the Caṇḍamahā-roṣaṇa-tantra (MSS. of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Société Asiatique, and Cambridge).

As is well known, the doctrine expressed in this very difficult formula forms one of the details of Buddhist doctrine regarded by the early Buddhists themselves as of primary importance; and its meaning has been frequently discussed. Mr. Waddell lately published in our Journal the explanation of the Lamas of Tibet; and the fullest account of the whole question will be found in Professor Rhys Davids's “American Lectures,” pp. 120, 155–161, where previous discussions are referred to. Since then M. Senart has published a very interesting article on the same subject, which is as rich in the results ascertained as remarkable for the elegance of its deductions.

Whilst engaged as a Research Student on “Mediaeval Arabian Musical Theory ” at Glasgow University, I had the good fortune to have access to several libraries, and among them the Bodleian, where I compiled for my needs a short but detailed catalogue of the Arabic musical MSS. in this famous library. As this catalogue may be of use to orientalists and musical antiquaries, I take this opportunity of giving it publicity.