I now proceed to discuss in detail the ascertained facts of each reign, inscriptions, of course, being the principal source of information, and in doing so shall permit myself a certain amount of latitude in digressions upon cognate topics. The inscriptions of the greatest value for establishing the genealogy of the royal family are Nos. 3, 8, and 19–22 of my List.

Amongst the most beautiful and most technically perfect of small Indian bronzes are those Mahāyāna Buddhist figures which are known in considerable numbers from Java, and more rarely from Ceylon. The schools which these figures represent are evidently closely allied; but there has been hitherto little evidence to fix the exact date of particular examples, for Buddhist are extends in Java over the period from the seventh to the fourteenth century, and has, of course, a still wider range in Ceylon.

The first modern traveller to enter the oasis of Turfan was a German botanist in the service of Russia. Dr. A. Regel. His account of the ancient sites he had visited in 1879 appeared in Petermanns Mittheilungen, but, owing to the description of the obstacles encountered, the expedition failed to produce any practical results beyond furnishing the proof that substantial and most remarkable ruins and other remains were still existent in that distant land.

A Passage in the Last Edict of Aśōka, which is explained by, and at the same time endorses, certain statements in the Dīpavṁsa and the Mahāvaṁsa, shows that in the third century B.C. there existed a record, of the time elapsed since the death of Buddha, from which it was known that Aśōka was anointed to the sovereignty 218 years after the death.

This anthology, much the best of all the shorter mediæval anthologies of the kind, was compiled by the Deputy Chungon Fujiwara no Sadaiye, more commonly known as Teika, who died in 1242 in his 81st year. He has inserted one of his own compositions, the stanza numbered XCVII. The editions I have used are the following:—Hyakunin isshiu miné no kakehashi (“Steps to the complete Understanding of the Hundred Poets”), Sensai Hyakunninisshiu Yamato kotobuki (“The Ever-Famous Anthology of the Hundred Poets”), and, chief of all, the Hyakunin isshiu isseki-wa (“One evening's talk on the Hyakunin”—i.e. a brief commentary; the title being a humilific one).

The Samaritans possess three Chronicles, written in that mixed Hebrew idiom peculiar to them. In substance idential with one another, they differ in form. One is quite short, the second a little more expanded, and the third a further enlargement of the two previous ones. Of these Chronicles the second has been published by Dr. A. Neubauer, “Chronique Samaritaine” (Asiatique), 1869; and separately, Paris, 1873), from a copy made by the present High Priest under the title Tolidoth (T.).