Knowledge of scholarly literature produced in recent years in Georgia is all too little disseminated in England. I was delighted to receive a copy of vol. xiii of the Bulletin of the Marr Institute of Languages, History, and Material Culture, published by the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (Sahartvelos SSR Mecnierebata Ak'ademia), Tiflis, 1942. This volume contains “A Bilingual Inscription from Armazi near Mcheta in Georgia,” by Professor George Tseretheli, written in Georgian with an almost complete English translation, and with three excellent photographs. The bilingual inscription is in Greek (10 lines) and Aramaic (11 lines), and is one of two inscriptions found at Armazi, 22 km. from Tiflis, in 1940 in excavations under the direction of the late I. Javakhishvili. A report of this discovery was made at the Session of the Scientific Council of the Institute in 1940, and at the first Conference of the Georgian Academy of Sciences on the 1st March, 1941. The Greek inscription was published by S. Qaukhchishvili (Qauχčlišvili) and A. Shanidze in 1941. Professor Tseretheli has analysed the Aramaic inscription, its script, language, and historical significance, and offered a translation. The script which he proposes to call Armazian Aramaic, a new variety of this alphabet; is of great importance for the history of writing in Georgia.

Dr. Guillaume, following Professor Mowinckel, has recently examined a number of passages in the Old Testament in which he suspects traces of magical practices, incidentally throwing light on several obscure Hebrew words and phrases which have hitherto defied interpretation, or rather satisfactory interpretation.

The notice of Abū Bakr Ya'īsh b. Muḥammad b. Ya'īsh in Ibn Bashkuwāl, ed. Codera, p. 628, gives his death as in 418 or 419. This confirms the view that Dhunnunid rule began before 423. Abū Bakr Ya'īsh must have reached power about 400: Ibn Kauthar was killed by his orders in 403 (loc. cit., p. 39) while at the funeral of a certain Qushairī (not the mystic) in 400 Ibn Ya'īsh, presumably Muḥammad the father, took the prayers.

It is uncertain when Islam began to penetrate the “western Sudan”: for a review of the evidence, reference may be made to the earlier chapters of Bovill's Caravans of the old Sahara. That the age-old north to south and west to east trade routes (carrying outwards gold and slaves, inwards cloth and manufactured articles, internally dates and salt as the main articles of commerce), provided the vehicle can be in little doubt, as also that, by the fourth century a.h. if not earlier, appreciable Moslem influence had begun to work in the area shown on modern maps as northern Nigeria. In this area Arabic is not a tongue spoken, save in dialect by the numerically insignificant tribe of Shuwas in the northeast. But with the spread and pre-eminence at first cultural and later political of Islam, written “classical” Arabic, which provided the only means of a literary education became the medium of diplomacy, commerce, and correspondence. This position it maintained until a few years ago, suggesting a parallel to the use of Latin in medieval Western Europe. Yet, so far as is known, although original works were produced farther north in the Sahara proper, until the “reforming” Fulani jihad at the end of the eighteenth century a.d. (active operations began 21.2.1804), few original compositions in Arabic emerged. The stimulus of this jihad appears, among other results, to have evoked the nucleus of an original indigenous Arabic literature, none of which has been printed or translated, save a few historical documents.

The earliest Malay literature extant belongs to a time five hundred years ago, when in spite of having embraced Islam the Malay still cared enough for the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to translate them into a vernacular already full of Arabic loanwords. In addition he borrowed from India folk romances tricked out with motifs and descriptive passages from the two great Hindu epics. For example, in one such romance, the Hikayat Parang Puting, when the fairy lover “burning as if he would set fairyland on fire” is rejected by his mistress, he tosses sleepless until “the cocks crow, the birds of paradise sing in the sky, the parrots chatter in the angsoka trees, parroquets on the boughs of the nagasari and mynahs on the chempaka trees, and a drizzle of rain makes all the flowers bloom”. The Indian genius, like our own, will readily sentimentalize landscape to accord with human moods. But turn to the Malay version of a scene in the garden at Hastinapura that “astonished the moon by its beauty”:—“about midnight was seen a portent of the city's imminent doom. It was utterly still and the moon looked like a lovely woman peeping from behind a door. Gentle rain fell and a light breeze stirred in the distance. There were banks of clouds of all shapes and the birds were restless, flying here and there like a man with two wives.” So far as I know that last simile is a gloss by the observant, cynical Malay. In modern jargon, the Indian is an introvert, the Malay an extravert.

Konow's “The Home of Paiśācī” (24 pages) was printed in ZDMG., 1910, and Grierson's reply (38 pages) in ZDMG., 1912. Konow concluded that “the Paiśācī described by Prakrit grammarians was based upon a dialect spoken in and about the Vindhyas, and perhaps further to the south and east” (p. 118). Grierson believed that “the home in India of the Piśācas was in the North-West of India, where these (the ‘modern Piśāca’) languages are spoken, and that— the nidus of Paiśācī Prakrit was also in the North-West” (p. 85). The theories of previous scholars as stated by Konow and Grierson were that Pai. was a hill dialect (Lassen), a low Prakrit spoken by Dravidians identifiable with Apabhraṃśa (Hoernle), a Prakrit of the North-West (Pischel), and (the Pai. of Guṇāḍhya, author of the Bṛhatkathā only) based upon an Aryan language of the north-west or west, but spoken by non-Aryan peoples (Lacôte).

Grenard has said, “it is largely because of human nature's delight in superlatives, that the world's famous captains have always been given perfectly fabulous hosts. Great generals must have huge armies. The names of Genghis Khan (Chinghiz Khan), Timur, Alexander, and Xerxes mount like wine to the brain of the historian. His figures become figures of speech: ‘one hundred thousand’ becomes his minimum. He soon leaps to ‘one million’. He does this with a sense of relish but also because he knows that his reader will tremble with pleasurable awe at the passing of a conqueror who leads countless warriors.”

In 1932 my friend Professor P. Pelliot handed to me eleven photographs of the Persian documents discovered at Bāmiyān. The originals must have been brought to Paris by the French Archæological Mission to Afghanistan, but I understood that they were to be returned to Kabul.

I Have no space to relate the early history of Jhansi. Before her marriage, the Rani's name was Manubai Tambe. Her father, Moropant Tambe, was a Karhad Brahman from Wai in the Satara district. He obtained employment with the last Peshwa Bajirao II, and through his influence married his daughter to Gangadharrao Newalkar, the Raja of Jhansi, who was of the same caste as himself. According to Indian custom, Manubai thereafter changed her first name to Lakshmibai.

Av., x, 2, 8 c, d, and 26 c, d, taken together, read: Citvā cityaṁ hanvoḥ puruṣasya divaṁ ruroha hatamaḥ sa devaḥ? Atharvā … mastiṣkād ūrdhvaḥ prerayat pavamāno'dhi śīrṣatas, literally, “Who is that God who, having piled a piling in the Person's jaws, ascends to the sky? Atharvan … the Purifier, sent (them) forth upward from the brain, from the head.” What is “piled” and what “sent forth”?

Among the several hundred archaic forms preserved in the inscriptions on the bone fragments of the Honan Find which research has failed to identify there is a minority demanding special attention. And in it perhaps the most outstanding challenge to aggressive epigraphists is the figure appearing in Plate II. This inscription discloses a human shape of grotesque design. Above the emaciated and linear frontal figure of a man, appears an object covering but concealing his head, which resembles an outsize and ill-designed bowler hat. From what seem like ear-flaps depend two oval earrings perhaps, and in front of the bulky headgear two small apertures are remarkable. Such is the leading figure in the sequence of the four characters in the centre of the plate. On each side of the three main rows are several characters perhaps not all connected with the three main columns.