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.

“ 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—

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.

§ 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.

The collection of books and manuscripts belonging to the library of William Marsden, and given by him to King's College in 1835, but now in the possession of the School of Oriental Studies, has in its valuable contents a few Marathi manuscripts. Sir E. Denison Ross, in his article on “The Manuscripts Collected by William Marsden”, published in the Bulletin (Vol. II, Pt. Ill), has reproduced on pp. 535 and 537 the entries made by Mr. Marsden on these Marathi MSS.

The Zulu language proper, Isizulu, is now spoken by the natives of Zululand and of the greater part of Natal, though naturally there are dialectal differences within that area, and these differences become more pronounced as the Xosa border is approached. The language of the amaMpondo, for instance, seems to savour both of Zulu and of Xosa. One of the outstanding phonetic differences between Zulu and Xosa is that the latter uses the alveolar nasal combination nd where the former uses the velar ηg, e.g. Xosa ndi, and Zulu “cardinal” vowels and the use of the vowel chart, cf. the various phonetic readers published by the London University Press, and particularly the Italian Phonetic Reader. They are indicated on the chart by the numbers (1) to (8).

The learned Father Paulinus a S. Bartholomœo (1749–1806), a discalceate Carmelitė and a missionary of Malabar, in his Examen Historico-criticum Codicum Indicorum Bibliothecœ Sacrœ Congregationis de Propaganda fide (Rome, 1792), p. 72, seq., records in the following way the work of one of his fellow-brethren of the Order of Carmelites, Father Ildephonsus a Prcesentatione (d. 1789): “Num. XXXI. Collectio omnium dogmatum & arcanorum ex Puránis seu libris Canonicis paganorum Indianorum, seu tractatus de falsa secta paganorum Asice maioris seu Indice Orientalis, & prœsertim de superstitionibus Gentilium Malabarium.

The biography of this great Egyptian scholar and organizer was published in one volume in 1894 by Dr. Durry Pasha (1841–1900). It was mainly taken from the ninth volume cf in which 'Alī Pāsha had described his early studies at village schools and higher education at government institutions. Finally he was sent-to Paris in company with the sons of Mohammed Ah Pasha to complete his education. This life-story reveals to the reader the social and political conditions of Egypt and the introduction of the refo

Since the appearance of the last number of this Bulletin I have had the good fortune to find the outer cover of the King's College manuscript of Almeida's History of Ethiopia, which had hitherto been missing. The discovery is important, for attached to this cover there was not only the original title page, but also the “Preliminary Matter” referred to by Marsden in his Catalogue, occupying in all eleven folios. The contents are as follows:—