With advancing knowledge of the Iranian language of the Sakas of Khotan, it has proved possible to establish the connections of several words hitherto misunderstood and to separate some words which have been confused.

The Jewish community of Ḥabbān is no more. The Yemenite Jews have emigrated almost wholesale to Palestine, taking with them, indeed, a number of their books and documents, but they cannot now be studied in their homeland. For the further history of the Yemenite Jews Professor S. D. Goitein's article on the “Transplantation of the Yemenites” may be consulted, but my own brief and crowded six days in Ḥabbān during December, 1947, were probably one of the last visits paid by an orientalist to such a curious medieval community. In the melting-pot of the new state of Israel it is probable that the unique culture of the Yemenite Jews will not long survive the passing of the older generation.

The scantiness of Parthian inscribed material enhances the importance of any new find. The existence of inscriptions and drawings on the rock-walls of a gorge near Birjand (Southern Khorasan) had been known for some time; but their antiquity was not recognized until Mr. Jamal Rezai, a Persian student from Birjand, visited the gorge and took photographs, which he submitted to Dr. Sadiq Kiya, of the University of Tehran. Dr. Kiya at once correctly identified the writing as Parthian and, in company with Mr. Rezai, published the whole material, together with a preliminary reading of the inscriptions. Dr. Richard N. Frye also paid a visit to the site and reported on it briefly in the Persian literary monthly Mihr. Later some uninformed criticism, claiming modern origin of the remains, appeared in the same periodical; it was justly refuted by Dr. Kiya.

In MS. 104 of the Maxwell collection of the Royal Asiatic Society is a tract entitled Nūr al-Daḳā'iḳ. It is attributed to Shamsu '1-Dīn ibn 'Abdullah, the Sumatran mystic who died in 1630. This manuscript was unknown to van Nieuwenhuijze when he wrote his thesis, but he has dealt with Arabic texts of the same title, and printed extracts from them. In Leiden Cod. Or. 1945 which he hasanalysed are three passages which correspond in part with the Arabic text and the Maxwell manuscript, although none of these run parallel to this Maxwell version in its entirety. Taken together, however, these texts provide a complete second reading of the Maxwell text, and make it possible to amend several corrupt passages. When for a few words the Arabic text has provided the better reading, it has been easy to insert the equivalent in the Malay text. By this means it has been possible to produce a tolerable Malay text, and since none of Shamsu '1-Din's Malay works have been published this may be of interest.