This paper attempts to bring together the facts disclosed in somewhat disjointed fashion in the Āīn-i-Akbari so as to present as nearly as possible a complete view of the theory of the land revenue held at the headquarters of Akbar's administration. How far that theory accorded with the actual practice in the villages is another question, and one on which the work of Abul Fazl cannot be expected to throw light; but it is perhaps fair to assume that in the sixteenth century, as in the twentieth, practice tended to approximate to theory, and that if we make some obvious reservations and allowances we can take the theory as a trustworthy guide. So far as the writers are aware, this task has not previously been carried out, and it is not difficult to show that the partial accounts of the system contained in standard textbooks of Indian history are marked by numerous errors or omissions. The importance of Akbar's reign in the political and economic history of India appears to afford sufficient justification for an attempt to restate the official account of what is universally regarded as one of his greatest administrative achievements, a correct understanding of which is necessary for the appreciation of much of the historical material recorded in the Āin.

In the Journal for October, 1917 (p. 815), I discussed some of the material available for the study of wages and prices in the latter part of Akbar's reign, and offered the tentative conclusions that, while a much wider basis is desirable for a final judgment, (1) we may take the rupee to have been worth at the Imperial capital about seven times as much grain as in the years 1910–12, (2) on the same basis we may regard urban wages as having been worth sotaewhere about the same amount of grain at the two periods. I have since been enabled to extend the inquiry to certain other commodities, which make, it possible to indicate provisionally and in general terms what money was actually worth to the population of the Imperial capital. The results apply directly only to this population, but they also have some bearing on the economic conditions prevailing over a wider area in Northern India.

Some time ago I endeavoured to explain to an audience in this room the predominantly pictorial character of the ancient poetry of the Arabs, and gave as illustrations some passages from the poets, chiefly describing the fauna of the wilderness and the landscape in which their life was set, and showing the minute observation and vivid sympathy which the artist brought to bear upon his subject. I wish, now, to continue the same theme by setting before you a poet's picture of himself, of his life and its ideals, of the things which he admired and strove to attain.

The dynasty of North Pañcāla, which sprang from one of the sons of Ajamīḍha, who reigned at Hastināpura, a successor of Bharata, king of the Paurava line, is of great importance, because not a few of its kings play an important part in the hymns of the Rigveda. Its genealogy is given by eight Puranas, the Vāyu, Matsya, Harivaṁśa, Brahma, Viṣṇu, Agni, Garuḍa, and Bhāgavata. The first four are based on a common original, but now form two versions. The Vāyu and Matsya generally agree, though with variations, the former having the older text. The Harivaṁśa and Brahma largely agree, the former having the better text, while the latter is generally incomplete. These four give the oldest account of the genealogy. The other four have recast the account and are later, the Viṣṇu's version being in prose.

It is one pleasing feature of the absence of logical method in these palæographic excursions and alarums, that interesting irrelevancies are more easily introduced and less severely regarded than where a stricter scheme has been pursued.

It was in April of 1839 that Sir John Keane's army found its way up the Bolan Pass to Quetta. When Outram reached Shikarpur on March 2 of that year he found the heat at 104° in the shade. This is nothing to the 130° in tents and hospital sheds which Jacob and others record in 1840–1, but it is an earnest of what the Bolan Pass, with the heat radiating from the rocky slopes and cliffs, meant in April.

All the elements are missing for even a moderate attempt at establishing definite rules for Samaritan Palæography. Of all the MSS. of the Pentateuch known in Europe only a few specimens have hitherto been published in facsimile, and, as far as I am aware, not one of them dated. The same holds good for all other Samaritan documents, prayer-books, letters, etc. There is therefore practically nothing to go upon, except personal experience, and the examination as far as possible of the materials available to as large an extent as circumstances allow. It is the course which I have endeavoured to pursue, but as will be seen the examination of MSS. hitherto known does not lead us further back than the eleventh or twelfth century. With all modesty I may claim to have seen most of the Samaritan MSS. in England and in Nablus. In the rest of Europe they are an almost negligible quantity: possibly the oldest dated fragment of a scroll of the Bible is in rny possession. I have seen all the scrolls in the Kinsha in Nablus, inclusive of the famous one ascribed to Abisha, grandson of Eliezar, the son of Ahron the priest, and I have obtained copies of the Tarikh, or as they call it of the Teshkul (pronounced Tesh'ul), i.e. the date of most of them. I have taken a photo of the scroll of 1140, and done my best to get an insight into Samaritan palæography, intimately bound up as it is with the history of the Bible. If anywhere, it is among the Samaritans that the ancient traditions have been fossilized, and their scribes betray a most touching anxiety to imitate the originals as closely as possible.

Certain elements are found, but in varying degree, in all human speech. Thus it is difficult to conceive of a language in which rhyme, stress-accent, tone-accent would not to some extent occur. In all languages some vowel-sounds are shorter than others, and in certain cases two consecutive words begin with the same sound. If we number these speech-elements we get (1) rhyme, (2) stress-accent, (3) tone-accent, (4) vowel-quantity, (5) alliteration. No doubt other characteristics could be enumerated, but for the purposes of poetry it is these five which have been principally exploited. English poetry has used chiefly (1), (2), and in earlier times (5); it is doubtful whether (3) has played any part, but an unconscious use has probably been made of (4).

In Greek philosophy the word λόγος, which by derivation and usage meant speech, discourse, spoken word, assumed at an early period in the history of Greek thought the meaning reason, thought, mind. It is so employed, apparently, first by Heraclitus of the Ionian school at Ephesus. There seems to be in the region of purely Greek thought and religion no conception of λόγος or uttered word of the gods which could have suggested its identification with universal reason, first principle and cause of all things as variously employed in Greek philosophy. Rumour was called Ὄσσα Διóς ἄγγελος, “Rumour the messenger of Zeus,” who goes about stirring up strife. And she is the messenger or dame rumour, Ὄσσα δ'ἄρ' ἄγγελος, who hastens swiftly with evil news, the Fama of Roman mythology. We must suppose, if the Ionian philosophers identified Word with cosmic reason and first principle, that they were induced and influenced by some well-known semi-philosophical use of the term “Word of the gods” as the personification of divine agency. It is wholly inconceivable that the Greek language permitted a sudden transformation of one of its most ancient and perfectly understood words without adequate cause. The etymology and ordinary meaning of λóγος afford no remote suggestion of a divine agent, a first principle. The philosophers certainly did not seize upon it arbitrarily for the most important term in the expression of their thought.

Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, on p. 311 of his most valuable work The Mohammadan Dynasties, has the following note after his list of the kings of Mālwa: “The list of the kings of Kashmīr should follow here; but their chronology is so uncertain that an accurate table can hardly be constructed. See my Catalogue of the Coins of the Muhammadan States of India, xlvii, 68.” It is evident, therefore, that the coins of this dynasty do not furnish us with sufficient materials for the construction of a complete chronological list of the kings of Kashmīr, and Mr. C. J. Rodgers, writing in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (lxv, pt. i, p. 225, 1896), says of them: “They are not of much value, as I have shown elsewhere, for the assistance they render in fixing the chronology.” I have, therefore, the less reason to regret my inability, far removed as I am from museums and libraries, to consult specimens and catalogues of these coins, and I propose, with the slender materials at my disposal, to make an attempt to solve some of the difficulties of this interesting question and to construct a tentative list of the kings of Kashmīr which may at least form the basis of further investigation by those more fortunately situated than I am. My materials consist chiefly of the Ṭabaqāt-i-Akbarī, Colonel Jarrett's excellent translation of the Āīn-i-Akbarī, and Firishtah's history (Bombay text of 1830). The last-named can hardly be regarded as an independent authority, for Firishtah, in his account of this dynasty, is little more than a copyist of Niām-al-dīn Aḥmad, to whose Ṭabaqāt-i-Akbarī he has added little, but I have found his history useful for the reconstruction of various corrupt and defective passages in the text of my copy of the Ṭabaqāt-i-Akbarī, which is not one of the happiest efforts of the Newal Kishore Press of Lucknow.

In the Journal for 1906 there were published some Arabic inscriptions on textiles in the South Kensington Museum. Two more Arabic inscriptionś on textiles may now be brought to notice. One of them is taken from a Russian publication; the other is from a piece of stuff in the Museum. Mr. A. F. Kendrick, of the Museum, has drawn attention to these specimens, and, as before, has kindly supplied the descriptions of the stuffs. The objects are:—

1. From Wladimir Bock. Coptic Art: Coptic Figured Textiles [Text in Russian]. Moscow, 1897.

The little work here presented in text and translation attracted my notice many years ago in connexion with a certain literary question. It occurs as Nos. 1255–6 in Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka, where its title is given as Mushṭi-prakaraṇa (?)-śāstra (Tālāntaraka-śāstra), translated (p. 374, among the works of Gina, i.e. Dignāga) as “Sāstra on the explanation of the fist”. I was not in a position to consider its relation to a Tibetan work with which I was familiar, ascribed to Āryadeva and bearing the name Hastabāla (sic) or Hastābhava-prakaraṇa with commentary.

The Nyāya-sūtra, which is supposed to be the earliest work extant on Nyāya philosophy, treats of four distinct subjects, viz., (1) the art of debate (tarka), (2) the means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa), (3) the doctrine of syllogism (avayava), and (4) the examination of contemporaneous philosophical doctrines (anya-mata-parīkṣā). The first subject, ample references to which are met with in the old Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and Jaina works, seems to have been first handled by a sage named Gotama or Gautama, who is reputed to have flourished in Mithilā (North Behar) about 550 b.c. The second subject, which is also referred to in old books, was associated with the art of debate at a very early stage. These two subjects, combined together, constitute the Tarka - śāstra (the philosophy of reasoning), popularly known as Gautamī vidyā (the Gotamide learning).

Pischel, in §§3, 4, and 5 of his Prakrit Grammar, refers very briefly to the Vibhāṣās of the Prakrit grammarians. In § 3 he quotes Mārkaṇḍēya's (Intr., 4) division of the Prakrits into Bhāṣā, Vibhāṣā, Apabhraṁśa, and Paiśāca, his division of the Vibhāṣās into Śākārī, Cāṇḍālī, Śābarī, Ābhīrikā, and Ṭākkī (not Śākkī, as written by Pischel), and his rejection of Auḍhrī (Pischel, Oḍrī) and Drāviḍī. In § 4 he says, “Rāmatarkavāgīśa observes that the vibhāṣāḥ cannot be called Apabhraṁśa, if they are used in dramatic works and the like.” He repeats the latter statement in § 5, and this is all that he says on the subject. Nowhere does he say what the term vibhāṣā means. The present paper is an attempt to supply this deficiency.