At the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, on the 21st Nov., 1864, I undertook the task of establishing the identity of the Xandrames of Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius, the undesignated king of the Gangetic provinces of other Classic Authors—with the potentate whose name appears on a very extensive series of local mintages under the bilingual Bactrian and Indo-Pali form of Kraṇanda.

The origin and earlier history of the Chinese coinage have been discussed in several European works, of which the most important are, in order of date, Dr. W. Vissering's “On Chinese Currency,” Leiden, 1877; Professor S. M. Georgievsky's “Drevneishia moneti Kitaichev” (The Ancient Chinese Coins), 1889; and M. Terrien de Lacouperie's “Catalogue of Chinese Coins,” printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum, 1892.

Nearly six years ago, G. E. Driver published a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, in which he examined some of the arguments dealing with the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel, which had been presented by Charles Boutflower in his work In and Around the Booh of Daniel. Three years later, in the course of an examination of the relation of Biblical Aramaic to other early Aramaic dialects, I took the opportunity of replying to a number of inaccurate or misleading statements and untenable hypotheses on the subject of the Aramaic of Daniel which appeared in the writings of certam defenders of the traditional date and place of origin of that book, including Boutflower. A rejoinder has now appeared from Boutflower's pen, dealing with a limited area of the field, in the form of a brief monograph, published under the title, Dadda-'idri, or The Aramaic of the Booh of Daniel. In this little book Boutflower replies to Driver and myself, and presents what he feels to be new light on the subject. A superficial reading might leave the impression that there was some ground for his theory, but a little examination reveals such omissions and assumptions and such misuse of evidence as to vitiate the argument. Indeed, the real issue is that of the validity of the evidence we possess, for fundamentally Boutflower seeks to set aside the evidence that has survived in favour of the evidence he assumes to have perished.

Albeit with some deterioration in recent years, Malaysia has a state with high levels of capacity that has achieved sustained economic growth through a commitment to macroeconomic stability and other pro-business measures. Recent comparative historical work argues that this state capacity is an institutional legacy of a specific model of British colonisation. While Malaysia is an amalgam of areas formerly under direct and indirect rule; the former – a model of colonisation characterised by the construction of a legal-rational bureaucracy with extensive geographic reach – was more prevalent. Prior to the transition to independence, the British increased the “direct” nature of their rule by creating a powerful central government that brought the various territories together. And, a concerted transition of power to a cohort of “bureaucrats-turned-politicians” ensured that the new nation's leaders inherited an intact state apparatus. However, a disproportionate number of these senior bureaucrats hailed from Johor, a state formerly under indirect rule - a colonial model associated with small, neo-patrimonial states with limited capacity. By using colonial sources to map the contours and composition of the Malayan state under British and, subsequently, Japanese rule, this article will explore the reasons for this paradox.

Consider the following passages from vocabularies:—

(1) CT. xiv, 3, K. 4325, iv–vi, 11. 18–25: ib. 5, K. 4368, iv–vi, 11. 8–16; and for col, iv, presumably 81–7–27, 147 (Meissner, Suppt., pl. 27):—

(2) CT. xiv, 14, K. 4396, 11. 10–13, dup. ib., S. 995, rev. 4–7:—

In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1930 Professor Langdon illustrates (Pl. IX, Fig. 4) a curious pottery stand found at Hursagkalamma, Kish. This, he states, is only found below the flood stratum down to waterlevel, i.e. prior to 3,200 B.C., according to his dating; and it may possibly be the niḳnaḳḳu of Babylonian ritual which was in common use, according to the texts, right down to the Persian Period. During my work at Kish I found a similar stand—now in the Field Museum, Chicago—in the same area of the site. These stands which average 2½ feet in height are shaped rather like an hour-glass, and are open throughout at the topand base. Moreover, they are ornamented with triangular incisions which sometimes pierce the side entirely, sometimes only partially so.

Exact investigation, assisted by some recent fortunate discoveries, has proved that the reputed identifications of many of the ancient sites famous in early Indian history are beyond doubt erroneous. Almost every such identification requires to be submitted to searching criticism before it can be accepted as correct. If any ancient site could be regarded as satisfactorily identified, that of the city of Kauśāmbī might apparently be so regarded. Nevertheless, the current belief is mistaken.

A. Linin's article (“K voprosam formalnogo izucheniya poezii turetskikh narodov” in the Izvestiya Vostochnogo Fakulteta Azerbaidžanskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, t. i, Baku, 1926, pp. 139–201), criticizing the work of T. Kowalski (Ze studjów nad formą poezji ludów turechich, 1922) on Turkish popular prosody, deals with some new details connected in one way or another with prosody. Among them the author draws attention on p. 180 to the soft pronunciation of the Turkish r, at the same time he refers to analogous results in one of the previous treatises of Messrs. Kowalski and Bergsträsser (ibid.). This fact is so interesting that it can be examined without reference to its influence upon the character of the rhymes and can properly be made the subject of a separate article.

Colebrooke, in his celebrated essay “On the Vedas, or Sacred Writings of the Hindus” (As. Researches, vol. viii.; Misc. Essays, vol. i.), was the first to direct general attention to the now familiarly known passage of the Jyotisha relative to the position of the solstices in the Hindu lunar zodiac, and to derive from it a date for use in determining the doubtful chronology of the earliest period of literary productiveness in India. His conclusion is expressed as follows: “Hence it is clear, that Dhanishṣhâ and Aslesha are the constellations meant; and that, when this Hindu calendar was regulated, the solstitial points were reckoned to be at the beginning of the one, and in the middle of the other: and such was the situation of those cardinal points in the fourteenth century before the Christian era” (Misc. Essays, vol. i., pp. 109–110). He had a little before (ibid., p. 106) declared that he “inclined to think, that the ceremonies called yajña, and the prayers to be recited at those ceremonies [namely, the prayers constituting the sanhitâs of the three older Vedas], are as old as the calendar.”

Among the unfinished papers left by the late Dr. Johns, Mrs. Johns has found one which he was preparing on the dated tablets of the reign of Kandalānu, last Assyrian viceroy of Babylonia, who succeeded Šamaš-šum-ukšn, brother of Ašurbanipal of Assyria. It is certain from a group of tablets from Dilbat, now in the Ašshmolean Museum (Weld Collection), that Kandalānu (Κινηλαδνου) and Ašurbanipal were the same persons; for this group of tablets from the same collection has the following dates: 1924, 487, Belibni, year 2, month Šabat, day 29; 1924, 489, Ašur-nādin-šumi, year 4, month Adar, day 2; 1924, 491, Ašur-aḫi-iddin, year 6, month Tebit, day 27; one in possession of Major A. H. Burn, C.I.E., Delhi, India, Ašur-aḫi-iddin, year 8, month Ab, day 8; 1924, 490, Kan-da-la-nu, year 15, month Kislev, day 9; 1924, 485, Kan-da-la-nu, year 19, month Nisan, day 14; one in possession of R. S. Cooke, Esq., Ministry of Awqaf, Baghdad, Kan-da-la-nu, year 17, month Šabat, day 3; 1924, 482, Kan-da-la-nu, year 15, month Kislev, day 9; 1924, 484, Ašur-bāni-apli, year 23, month Nisan, day 29; 1928,1, excavated at Ḫursagkalamma in 1927 by M. Watelin, but dated at Erech, Ašur-bāni-apli, year 18, month Ululu, day 21.

It is a matter for some surprise, that, of the scholars who have been engaged in public in the attempt to settle the date of Kanishka, none should have noticed the existence of a member of his dynasty who ought to have been recognised at least eight years ago. The case is as follows.

Like the invasion of the Danes in England, the incursions of the Bargi in Bengal, were characterized by murder and rapine and every species of atrocity. There is, however, a good deal of difference between the two, for we have nothing comparable to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle to record the latter, and in the matter of other materials, we are sadly lacking. The Nagpur Marhattas have left no historical records. Consequently there are no Marhatta sources. Neither are there any letters in Marathi, at least to my knowledge, on the subject, as these raids were undertaken by the now defunct house of Nagpur. Mr. Hill in his Bengal in 1756–7, has given us a brief summary of the English Factory Records of Fort William, and the old records of the East India Company might, if thoroughly searched, yield good material. The time, however, demanded for this is beyond our power to afford. Besides the above and occasional references here and there, there are, of course, three ether books which can be profitably consulted for the purpose—Salimulla's Tarikh-i-Bangla, Riyazu-s-salatin, and the Seir Mutaherin. This practically exhausts our list of authorities for studying the subject, so far as they are available to the general student.