The long flute of ancient and modern Egypt is the well-known nāy(Fig. I), so frequently represented since prehistoric times. A short flute which has a wide diameter, is the popular (Fig. 2), which has not hitherto been dealt with. The word 'uffāṭa is used in the Sharqīya province, as far, approximately, as Mīt Grhamr (west side), and means generally a short flute, but wide in diameter. The smallest 'uffāṭa is not longer than 20 cm. The instruments reproduced in Fig. 2 measure 42·3 cm., and the diameter varies between 18 and 20 mm. The longest nāy in Fig. 1 is 74·2 cm. long and 11 to 13 mm. in diameter.

AS Professor Robertson in his note on Ḍiyā-yi Fārsī (JRAS., Pts. I and II, 1951) referred to the MS. of the Majmū'a-i Ash'ār in the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, I consulted the Majmū'a to find out anything that could throw further light on this little-known Persian poet. But unfortunately the MS., which bears no date of transcription and neither the name of the compiler nor of the copyist, is silent regarding the poet. The book is a mere collection of poems and fragments of famous as well as obscure poets who have been dealt with in no chronological order and with no scheme whatsoever. Only four odes or rather the fragments of four odes are recorded under the name of Ḍiyā'u'd-Dīn Fārsī. The first two of these do not occur in Badā'ūnī's Muntakhabu't-Tawārīkh where alone, so far as my information goes, his poems are accessible in print. The three couplets in the third fragment form the first three verses of the second ode in the Muntakhab which consists of twenty-two. In the fourth fragment, containing eight verses, only five, viz. the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 8th (with slight variations and one or two careless omissions) are found in the 1st ode of the Muntakhab, again comprising twenty-two verses.

These notes, supplementary to the necessarily brief review of Mevrouw van Lohuizen-De-Leeuw's meritorious work, do not at all seek to revive the exhaustive discussions of 1913 or to scrutinize any subsequent contributions of fact or opinion. The aim is simply to signalize the authoress's main propositions and to record a few such provisional comments as seem relevant. In view of some tendency towards a “general opinion” a new objectively elaborated interpretation has a claim to careful consideration: and it seemed permissible to include, on a reviewer's part, one or two partly novel observations. While awaiting some new evidence of a “knock-out” kind, scholars may give attention to any serious reasonings.

In his review of my book The Making of Greater India (JRAS, 1951, p. 216) Professor Heine-Geldem said that he could not agree that the local genius which moulded Khmer culture and art was that of the Older Megalithic. He considered that the evidence I adduced pointed only to the existence of megalithic elements in the pre-Hindu culture of the Khmers, and he saw no evidence of their ever having had a “full megalithic culture”. He asks why, if megalithic monuments in the plains were destroyed or used for temple building by Indianized Khmers, no such monuments have been reported from among related tribes surviving in the neighbouring hills, where there would have been no incentive to build temples. And he concludes: “I am fully prepared to revise my view if megalithic monuments of the respective type should be discovered in south-eastern Indo-China, but I cannot see how the terraces and stepped pyramids of the Khmer could be derived from megalithic terraces and pyramids, the nearest of which are found at a distance of many hundred miles in the hills of Burma and Assam.” So Professor Heine-Geldern sees nothing in my characterization of the Khmer cultural evolution incompatible with my premise that it is guided by the Older Megalithic genius, but requires further evidence which the present paper will show to be available.

The defeat and settlement of Mysore was at once the first and the most dramatic of Wellesley's offensive measures during his Governor-Generalship. Aided by the prestige gained from this achievement, he set out to refashion the political framework of the Indian subcontinent.

The first two of these Tibetan inscriptions are from stone J. pillars (rdo riṅs) at Dbu Ru Žva-ẖi Lha Khaṅ, a small chapel some fifty miles north-east of Lhasa, on the left bank of the Skyid Chu river, almost opposite the point where, on its course down from Pho Mdo, the river takes a turn to the south-west.