In May, 1872, I was invited by my learned friend and pandit Kewiṭiyágala Unnánsé, of the Malwatté Monastery in Kandy, to be present at an ordination service, held, according to custom, on the full-moon day of Wesak, (May, June), being the anniversary of the day on which Gautama Buddha attained Nirváṇa, B.C. 543. I gladly availed myself of this opportunity of witnessing the celebration of a rite of which Englishmen have but little knowledge, and which has rarely, if ever, been witnessed by any European in Ceylon.

In Lat. 7° 59′ N., Long. 81° E., about fourteen miles N.E. of Dambulla, and about seventeen miles nearly due W. of Parâkrama Bâhu's capital, Pulastipura, is the singular natural stronghold referred to in the Thirty-ninth Chapter of the Mahâvamsa, and first re-discovered by Major Forbes, of the Ceylon Civil Service, in the year 1831. Sir Emerson Tennent (Ceylon, vol. i. p. 15) says of it: “Sîgiri is the only example in Ceylon of those solitary acclivities, which form so remarkable a feature in the table-land of the Dekkan, starting abruptly from the plain with scarped and perpendicular sides; and converted by the Indians into strongholds, accessible only by precipitous pathways, or steps hewn in the solid rock.” And, again (vol. ii. p. 579): “This gigantic cylindrical rock starts upward to a height prodigious in comparison with its section at any point, the area of its upper surface being little more than an acre in extent. Its scarped walls are nearly perpendicular, and in some places they overhang their base. The formation of this singular cliff can only be ascribed to its upheaval by a subterranean force, so circumscribed in action that its effects were confined within a very few yards, yet so irresistible as to have shot aloft this prodigious pencil of stone to the height of nearly 400 feet.” The height of the rock above the sea is probably more than this—a point which soon will be (if it is not already) settled by the Surveyors engaged in the Trigonometrical Survey of that part of Ceylon. I am also informed that the occurrence of so circumscribed and yet so irresistible a subterranean force is almost, if not quite impossible, and that the present position of Sîgiri, like that of the many similar strongholds in the table-lands of South India, may be more easily explained by a general subsidence of the soil around it. It is to be regretted that the geological history of Ceylon altogether has received so little attention; but it seems certain that Sîgiri owes its origin to the same force to which is due the great elevation which stretches for more than 150 miles in a N.E. direction from below Adam's Peak to Trinkomali, and forms the principal gneiss and granite mountain ranges of Ceylon, which, since their first appearance above the waters, have certainly undergone no second immersion. If this be so, then the crag of Sîgiri, which lies almost in the centre line of that upheaval, must be among those parts of the now habitable globe which first emerged from the deep, and have been longest accessible to man.

The Coimbatore District, containing more than 8000 square miles, is almost centrally situated in the south of the Peninsula, within the region occupied by the Tamil-speaking race, being about 250 miles west of Madras, and 80 east of the Malabar coast. Mysore bounds it on the north, and the Madras and Tinnevelly districts lie between it and Cape Comorin. Megalithic monuments are found in all the Madras districts, but I am inclined to think are most numerous in Coimbatore, where singly, in twos or threes, or in assemblages of scores or hundreds, they occur in every variety of situation, high on the ghauts and wild mountainsides, in remote jungles and malarious river-valleys, on wide open plains, on cultivated land, amid fertile gardens and rice tracts. Excluding the Nilgiri Hills, which, though belonging to Coimbatore, are a separate region, with a group of remains peculiar to themselves, the Coimbatore monuments are all sepulchral, consisting of kistvaens or tumuli, containing cists or chambers, originally underground, but now often more or less exposed. Stone-circles and standing stones are almost always associated with the tumuli, but never, so far as I know, found independently, as in other parts of India and in Europe. Neither am I aware of any true cromlech in Coimbatore. It may be interesting to give some account of two of the principal assemblages of these remains, one on the east, and another on the west side of the district. Seven miles north of Perămdoŏry, the chief town of a talook of the same name, midway between the towns of Salem and Coimbatore, after passing along a tract of fertile bottom-land, luxuriant with topes and gardens, the ground, iust beyond the village of Năllămpătti, rises into one of the wide rolling barren maidans characteristic of Southern India, on which a great cairn-cemetery is situated. Many hundreds of cairns are spread over a considerable tract; in general appearance heaps of blackened stones, some very small, and thence of every size up to 30 feet and more in diameter, they vary in height from one to four feet, but have evidently been much worn down by lapse of time and weather.

The researches of Schott have thrown considerable light on what was previously a very obscure question, namely, the Origines of the Mongols—a question I propose to reexamine, with his assistance and that of other recent authors. There are three methods of approaching such a question. We may analyze the Mongolian tongue, and thus discover the elements which went to make up the race; we may collect the references to the race that we find in contemporary authors; or we may examine the traditions current among the people themselves as to their origin. The first of these methods I shall not at present deal with, inasmuch as it is complicated by many extraneous elements, the Mongols having borrowed from Chinese, Thibetans, and Turks both materials for their civilization and also for their language.

The Sinhalese is one of the Aryan vernaculars of India, and is spoken by the descendants of a people who migrated from Magadha to Ceylon at a very remote period. The tradition recorded in Mahavansa is that Ceylon was colonised, by a prince of Lala, a district of Magadha, who landed in the island with seven hundred followers on the day of Gautama Buddha's death. Accepting this tradition, and comparing it with the tradition that Pali was a Magadha dialect, we should expect to find a close resemblance between Pali and Sinhalese. And such in fact is the case. With a few exceptions, Sinhalese follows Pali so closely that at first sight one might feel inclined to say that the former was derived from the latter. As a general rule, where Pali differs from the other Prakrits, the Sinhalese agrees with it; and this is the case not only with words but with grammatical forms. And there are several words not found in the other Prakrits or Sanskrit which are found in both Pali and Sinhalese. I have alluded to exceptions, and these deserve full consideration; but they are such as may be explained by the circumstance, to which the Buddhist traditions clearly point, that the language of Buddha's sermons was the dialect of one district of Magadha, and the language spoken by the colonisers of Ceylon that of another district. As an instance of these exceptions, I may mention the Sinhalese itiri “woman,” which clearly cannot have come to us through the Pali itthi, since the latter has lost the original r of the Sanskrit .

Few men have done more for the science of Oriental Numismatics than Frederic Soret. And yet among his writings we may search in vain for any work of great extent. The largest he ever published is his handbook, Éléments de la Numismatique Musulmane, and even this appeared in parts in the Belgian Revue, and was reprinted as a separate work after his death. Frederic Soret's work was done by small pieces, which, when put together, form a very considerable whole. The line he took was chiefly that of publishing such coins as he found in his own or other collections, and which were as yet unknown to the numismatic world,—if I may apply so large a term to so small a thing. And those short monographs of his are among the most precious additions to the knowledge of Oriental coins which the century has seen. Nor does Soret stand alone in this system of publishing inedited coins. He has been vigorously followed by a very able and sufficiently numerous body of German and other scholars, who have made known all the noteworthy coins which have come across their path.

Every collector of early Muhammadan coins must have observed that the dînârs of the fifth and two subsequent Khalîfahs are of two kinds: that is to say, some are plain, like those of the earlier Khalîfahs; whilst others have various Muhammadan names upon them, generally beneath the ordinary inscription on the area of the reverse.

It is well known, that dirhams and filses were struck in many parts of the then vast Muhammadan Empire; but it does not appear that under the first four Khalîfahs dînârs were struck in any other mint than that of the Capital.

Evam me sutaṁ. Ekaṁ samayaṁ Bhagavâ Râjagahe viharati Gijjhakûṭe pabbate. Tena kho pana samayena Râjâ Mâgadho Ajâtasattu Vedebiputto Vajjî abhiyâtukâmo hoti, so evam âha. Abam ime Vajjî evarhmabiddbike evammabânubhâve uccheccbâmi Vajjî vinâsessâmi Vajjî anayavyasanam âpâdessâmi Vaiiî ti.

1. I will tell the lucky and evil signs of goats. Such as have eight, nine, or ten teeth, are lucky, and may be kept; such as have seven teeth, should be removed.

2. A black circle on the right side of a white goat is a favourable mark. Likewise a white circle on the right side of one having the colour of an elk, of sable hue, or red.

3. The udderlike part hanging down from the neck of goats is known by the name of “neck ornament.” A goat with one dewlap brings happiness; extremely lucky are those having two or three dewlaps.

4. All goats without horns, and those that are entirely white or entirely black, promise good. Lucky also are such as are half black, half white; or half russet, half black.

5. A goat that marches in front of the flock, and the first that plunges into water, — that has the head white, or blazes on the forehead, — is favourable.

Page 281, on coin dated 236, readinstead of …

Page 296, No. 20 (Soret 89), dele the statement ‘Distant from,’ etc., and read, ‘A town on the banks of the Caspian Sea, also called Darband.’

Page 297, No. 33, readinstead of.

As this valley bas never been visited by an European traveller, the little I have to say about it may make it acceptable to the Society. On one occasion I tried to visit it in company with Dr. Hooker, but unsuccessfully, as, after reaching the top of the Chola Pass—14,900 feet—which leads into it from Sikim, we were met by an officer of the Chinese Government at Lassa, with a military escort, who refused us permission to enter the valley. The particulars I have to state may, I believe, be relied on, as during many years I had constant opportunities of communicating with traders and others residing in the valley, in addition to the officials of the Sikim Raja, who annually sojourned in it from May to November. The route from Darjeeling to Choombi was described by me many years ago, as also the route from it to Lassa; but no one has described the valley itself.

For the name Manchu several etymologies have been proposed. Klaproth says that the Chinese characters representing it mean a well-peopled island, and that it is probably of Chinese origin; the Tatar hordes in early times liking to adopt Chinese soubriquets. The Thibetans transcribe the name Mandjhau, and some have thought it to be of Thibetan origin. Remusat has devoted several pages of his magnum opus to a discussion of the subject, but without arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. Palladius tells us that the name Mantszuin, i.e. Chinese soldiers, was applied to a large number of Chinese emigrants settled by Khubilai Khan on the borders of Corea to resist a threatened attack from Japan. It may be that it was from these emigrants that the name was first derived. It may be, again, that the name is connected with the Corean deity Manchusri, who lived, says Palladius, according to the Corean Buddhists, in the Changpo Shan mountains, i.e. in the cradle-land of the Manchus, vide infrà This last appears to me to be the most reasonable etymology.

On February 9th, 1874, I read a paper before the Royal Geographical Society entitled, “Notes of a Journey outside the Great Wall of China,” made by the Hon. T. G. Grosvenor and myself in the autumn of 1872, including an account of a visit to the ruins of the city of Shangtu, the ancient northern capital of the Yuan Dynasty, described in such glowing terms by Marco Polo, who was there in the reign of its founder, the famous Kublai Khan. They are situate on the northern bank of the Lan-ho—the Shangtu River—about twenty-five miles to the north-west of Dolonnor, the populous city founded by the Emperor Kang-hi, as a trading mart between the Chinese and the Mongolian tribes. These ruins were identified by the existence of a marble memorial tablet, with an inscription of the reign of Kublai, in an ancient form of the Chinese character. A more detailed account of the history of the city so frequently referred to by mediaeval travellers, derived from Chinese and other sources, has been drawn up; and a plan of the ruins, with a facsimile and translation of the inscription, added, in the hope that it may prove of some interest to the Members of your Society.

Seventeen years ago the lamented M. Soret published a description of a most interesting silver coin struck at Miṣr in the year of the Flight 525 (A.D. 1130–1), bearing a name Abu-l-Ḳásim Muḥammad Al-Muntaẓar-bi-amri-lláh, which does not appear in the list of the Fáṭimí Khalífahs of Egypt, though the place and date of the coin would certainly lead us to suppose that it was struck by a ruler belonging to this dynasty. A remarkable circumstance is that the coin was struck during the reign of Al-Ḥáfiẓ.

Eleven years ago I had the honour to read a paper before this Society, entitled “Five Hundred Questions on the Social Condition of the People of India.” That paper has been widely circulated, and has excited some interest on the subject. Since then, I have prosecuted one department of it—Oriental Proverbs in Relation to the Life and History of the People in India.

Pulastipura, situated in lat. 7° 56′ N., long. 81° 3′ E., and rather more than 50 miles S.E. of Anurâdhapura, was the capital of Ceylon from the middle of the 8th century to the beginning of the 14th (A.D. 769–1314), and when at the height of its prosperity, during the long and glorious reign of Parâkrama Bâhu the Great, it must have been a city of great size and importance. It is pleasantly situated in the plain, on the shores of one of those numerous artificial lakes which the Sihalese kings loved to dot over the country; and from most of its ruins, as well as from the lake itself, are visible to the S.W. the mountain ranges of Mâtalê, ending in the Hunasgiriya Peak, and to the N.W. the haunted top of Riṭigala.

Of the following two inscriptions, the former is edited from a MS. in Dambulla Wihāre, of which I have a transcript in the Roman character by a native copyist; and the latter from a copy made by Nāranwiṭa Unnānse, which I owe to the courtesy of Mr. R. C. Childers. In the Dambulla MS. the inscription is repeated twice, and the readings of the two copies differ pretty frequently, as will be seen from the various readings given below the text.

Kkaráj or Khiráj, for the word is written both ways, indifferently, signifies literally “going or issuing out of.” It occurs, with a slight difference in the spelling, in a passage of the Koran, where two constructions have been put upon it, by commentators — one that it means ajr or hire, and the other that it means nafa, or profit generally. In the former sense, kharáj when applied to land would be rent, and the person rendering it a tenant for the recipient, who would be the proprietor ; in the latter sense, it might be a profit of any kind issuing out of the land, and the person rendering it might himself be the proprietor. To this double meaning of the word may perhaps be traced a controversy respecting the proprietary right to land in India, which has subsisted more or less down to the present time.

In Trübners Record of June, 1871, I gave a notice of a short Inscription, of which a rubbing was brought from Takht-i-Bahi by Dr. Leitner. The rubbing showed the Inscription to be in a very defective state, and, according to General Cunningham, the original stone has been used for grinding spices on. A photograph of it has since been obtained, from which the accompanying plate has been copied. Many of the letters are indistinct, but the photograph would seem to indicate that the blank space in the middle was blank from the first. The stone is now in the Lahore Museum. I quote what I said in the Record.