49. M.I. i, 30 (wood, c. 10 × 2·5 cm., broken away at r.; 11. 2 recto + 3 verso, of neat, cursive dbu-can script).

[A 1] [] | : | Śa . cu . pho . ña . gcu … . [A 2] khal . boṅ . bu . rgyab . cha . sga . daṅ . cha[s] … [B 1] gcig | myi. gsum . gyi . zla . ba . gci … [B 2] do . ẖtshal. baẖi . thaṅ . du . brtsis . te . phye . khal . phye … [B 3] ñi . śu . gñis . la | pho . ñar . mchi. ba | b … .

The Latin strāta is one of the words of culture which passed to the East. Greek has στρτα Aramaic has srṭy' Levy, Chaldäisches Wb., Dalman, Aram, nhebr. Wb., with plural srṭyn, as also the form 'sṭrṭy' in the same sense. For Syriac is quoted (Brockelmann, Lex. Syr.) 'sṭrṭ. Arabic has ṣirāṭ in the eschatological al-ṣirāṭu 'l-mustaqīmu of the Qur'ān. A similar narrow bridge is well known in the Zoroastrian činvatō pərəntuš of the Avesta.

The last few years have seen a great and almost universal interest in the history of medicine. It is strange that, in spite of the researches that have been made in the epidemics and diseases of ancient times, none of the writers who have worked on the various aspects of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis, as the Baghdād Boil is called in medical languagehas been able to trace the history of the disease before the nineteenth century. It is not as though it were a disease that could have escaped the notice of the ancients. Cutaneous Leishmaniasis is characterized by a superficial ulcer, sometimes as large as the top of a coffee cup, which runs a slow and protracted course. It is not as though it were a disease confined to some distant and uncivilized part of the globe. It is found in South America, North Africa, and all over the Middle and Near East. Why, then, is there no history of the disease ? Where did it start ? Who can claim the honour of introducing the Bouton de Biskra into Moroccothe Baghdād Boil into 'Irāq, the Delhi Boil into India, and the Tropical Sore into non-tropical Persia ?

Twice recently (Journal, 1931, 572 and 899) I have touched on certain curious cases of compounds of Sanskrit lāpaya. Further inquiry has produced some other instances and suggested to me that the Buddhist technical term, lapanā, is connected with the same verbs. For though the commentators were presumably well aware of its meaning, their statements are so lacking in clarity that modern scholars are still in doubt regarding the exact sense, and their vagueness seems to me due to attempting to make their explanations fit in with a derivation from lap. But this etymology is negatived by the old phrases in which the term originated, such as janaṁ lāpayeyya (Suttanipāta, 929) and janaṁ lapetave (Udāna, 21), which cannot be reconciled with their suggestions that the sinner himself is the speaker (cf. Abhidharmakośa, vol. iii, 165, n. 4, and Visuddhimagga, 22 ff.). As it occurred to me that possibly the facts might be accounted for by a derivation from some root other than the recognized ones, lap and lī, I turned for light to the use of rap in the Rigveda and Avesta. Though the inquiry did not issue in a certain explanation of the words in question, it did bring me to a conclusion about the Vedic root, rap, which, despite its heterodoxy, seems inescapable.

Hsü Shên in his postface to the Shuo wên gives a list of eight styles of script practised in the Ch'in period. The fourth of these is called ch'ung shu and a note is added by Hsü Ch'ieh one of the editors of the revised text which was published in a.d. 986 at the emperor's command. He remarks that the term is equivalent to niao shu “bird script”, so called because the tops of the characters represent bird forms. There is, however, tangible evidence that this fanciful variety of writing was in vogue earlier than the Ch'in period.