During the latter part of 1876, I travelled along the Makrān coast from Gwādar to Jāsk, and as it appeared to me that the identifications of the various places on this coast mentioned by Arrian as having been touched at by Alexander's Admiral Nearchus, and others, mentioned by Ptolemy and Marcian, had not, up to the present time, been satisfactorily established by Dr. Vincent, Otter, Kempthorne, Müller, or, indeed, by any one who has touched on the subject, I collected all the names of places along the coast I could, and made notes regarding its physical aspect, in the hope of finding some traces of the spots mentioned by the geographers above alluded to, and which might be sufficient to fix their positions with somewhat more certainty.

In the cold weather of the season 1872–3, Mr. Griffiths, decorative artist in the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeeboy School of Art, with several pupils from that school, was deputed by the Government of Bombay to copy the paintings in the caves at Ajanta. One of the principal objects of his mission was to replace as far as possible the frescoes previously copied by Major Gill, which had unfortunately been destroyed by the fire at the Crystal Palace, in 1866. In addition to this, however, he was instructed to copy any others which might seem to him sufficiently interesting to be worthy of preservation.

It is well known that proper names in the East, and especially among the Mohammadans, follow no such simple rule as that which has long prevailed in modern Europe, where the Christian name or names conferred in infancy and the family name or surnames are usually borne through life, and where it is a matter of suspicion to have an alias. In the East, on the other hand, we hear of persons gathering up in the course of their career a variety of names, and being popularly known by one or other of them at different periods, and to an extent that gives rise to perplexity. This was notably the case among the Arabs in the height of their preeminence. A person might receive a name in his infancy (usually conferred on his birth or at his circumcision), and to this might be added a patronymic, or a name expressive of his paternal or family relations. He might then receive a title expressive of his zeal for the faith, and soubriquets descriptive of his personal qualities or appearance, or the country or town in which he was born or had settled, or the religious sect to which he belonged ; and if he played a part in public life, to all these might be added, as in Europe, a title or titles of dignity; and if he had acquired a reputation as an author, he might assume some name of fancy. These various names or titles might never be united in the same individual, but the combinations are numerous and shifting. Certain rules are observed in their formation or application, but it was a matter of accident by which of these designations a person might be known to his contemporaries, or his name transmitted to modern times.

It has often been said that there is no Grammar in Chinese; and the statement is true. When we speak of “grammar,” with reference to the written characters, or even to the spoken language, of the people of China, the term must be understood in a peculiar sense. Grammar, as the Greek derivation shows, has to do with words, and is applicable only to languages that have an alphabet; whereas the Chinese written characters were at first pictures and ideagrams, and they have continued to be so substantially during all the millenniums of their use, down to the present day.

In romanizing this Naga language, a has the sound of a in ‘far,’ ‘ah’ ‘ah’; ā has the sound of a in ‘fate,’ ‘rate’; c has only a soft sound, never that of k; e (single) has the sound of e in ‘met,’ ‘net’; g has only a hard sound as in ‘give’; i has the sound of i in ‘pin,’ ‘sin’; u has only the sound of u in ‘but,’ ‘nut.’ One object of this style of romanizing is to reserve this mark (′) for accent only. The accent mark is needed to distinguish some words spelt alike, but with different meanings, indicated by accentuation, as ázu, first syllable accented, means ‘a dog,’ but azu, without special accent, means ‘blood.’