It is probably in the recollection of some of the senior members of this Society how wide and deep an interest was excited in the year 1853 by the publication of Stanislas Julien's translation of the Life and Travels of Hiouen-thsang. The account given by an eye-witness of the religious, social, political, and literary state of India at the beginning of the seventh century of our era was like a rocket, carrying a rope to a whole crew of struggling scholars, on the point of being drowned in the sea of Indian chronology; and the rope was eagerly grasped by all, whether their special object was the history of Indian religion, or the history of Indian literature, architecture, or politics. While many books on Indian literature, published five-and-twenty years ago, are now put aside and forgotten, Julien's three volumes of Hiouen-thsang still maintain a fresh interest, and supply new subjects for discussion, as may be seen even in the last number of the Journal of your Society.

All students of the facts and doctrines of Islām, that uncompromising and purely monotheistic faith promulgated by Muhammad to the pagan Arabians, his kinsmen or countrymen, as also to the Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians who dwelt in and about Madīna, or the three Arabias, thirteen hundred years ago, will have met with some mention of what European writers generally know as “The ninety-nine names of God,” but which are denominated in chap. vii. v. 179, as also in chap. xx. v. 7, of the Qur'ān itself, “The Most Comely Names,” .

In Part I. published in the preceding Volume, XI. page 287, I compared, principally, the phonology of the two groups. I now proceed to compare some of the other parts of their grammar. Since Part I. was written, the third volume of Mr. Beames's Grammar has appeared, which gives a very complete account of the Gaurian verb, and also by the kindness of Professor Hoernle the proof-sheets of a great part of his Grammar of the Eastern Hindi have been sent me. This work is also a comparative grammar of the Gaurian languages in general. It is, it seems to me, a most valuable work, and throws a great deal of new light on the origin of many of the grammatical forms. Professor Hoernle now calls the languages treated of ‘Gaudian’ instead of ‘Gaurian,’ as we have ‘Dravidian’ instead of ‘Dravirian.’

Tibet, according to the Chinese, was inhabited by many scattered tribes up to the end of the sixth century, when they first heard of the establishment of a kingdom in their midst by Luntsansolungtsan, who, according to the ‘Reearches’ of Ma Tuanlin, during the period K'aihuang, (A.D. 581–600) of the Sui Dynasty, extended his dominion on the south-west as far as P‘olomên (Brâhmaṇa—Central India), till at the beginning of the T'ang Dynasty their army numbered 100,000 warriors, and they become a powerful state. He is probably the Luntsansu of the genealogy on p. 443. It was his son Ch'itsunglungtsan who sent the first mission to the Emperor T'aitsung of the T'ang Dynasty in 634, and was given a Chinese princess in marriage in 641.

During a three years' stay that I made in Persia, while travelling about the country, and living in Tehran, Meshed, Ispahan, and Shiraz, I made a small collection of coins, and passed many pleasant hours in trying to decipher their legends, and reading in Persian histories what I was able to find about the kings and princes whose names occurred theron. Since I have come home, Mr. Poole, the Keeper of the Coins at the British Museum, has kindly looked over my collection, and, while pointing out what is new, has most courteously given me the benefit of his scholarship in clearing up many difficulties; to his various colleagues in the Medal Room I am also indebted for assistance and instruction.

These Islands, from which the Portuguese were expelled by a British fleet aiding Shah Abbas in 1622 A.D., and of which the advantages were tersely put to me by a native the other day in the words, “The land is silver and the sea is pearl,” are situated generally in lat. 26° and long. 50°, the exact position of the Portuguese fort on the larger island being given as lat. 26° 13′ 53„ N., long. 50° 31′ 45„ E. They are surrounded by shoal water on every side, which greatly adds to the beauty of the place. Thus, on looking out to sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor'-wester, it would seem as if Nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint of living green in her paint box; and then, wearying of the effort, had splashed an angry streak of purple into the foreground. The water itself is so clear that you can see far down into the coral depths, while springs of fresh water bubble up through the brine, both near the entrance of the harbour and at several other places along the coast.

I Have to remark before all, that the manuscript referring to Sheibani Khan, upon which I am speaking, ought not to be confounded with the Sheibani-nameh, edited by the Russian Orientalist K. Berezin, in 1849, in I. Biblioteka Vostochnikh Historikof. The last-named is an insignificant little treatise of the deeds accomplished by the famous Uzbeg chief, and may be divided into two different parts. The first, containing one of those numerous compilations of the history of the Turks, must be ranked amongst the third class of imitators of Ala-eddin Djuveini and of Rashid-eddin Tabibi, with the only exception that the anonymous author, being probably of Turkish origin, has less disfigured the Turkish and Mongol nomina propria than many of his predecessors and subsequent writers upon the same subject. In the second part the author dwells at some length upon that branch of the Djenghizides of which Abulkhair Khan, the ancestor of Sheibani, was an offspring—I mean to say upon the family of Djudji Khan, and here we meet with certain details and genealogical data not to be met with in most of the books treating the same subject.

The Society was informed in the Report which was read at the Anniversary Meeting in May, and which has since been printed in the Journal, that many new Inscriptions had recently been discovered in Babylonia by Mr. Hormazd Rassam. When that gentleman lately returned to England from Mesopotamia, he left working parties both at Babylon and Nineveh, and it is from the excavations of the former place that the British Museum has recently received the very interesting relic which I am now about to describe.

The following three Pāli suttas strictly bear on the much-diputed question of the Buddist Nirvāna, and I trust they will, as far as Southern Buddhism is concered, help to finally settle the question.

The suttas are taken from the Saṁyutta Nikāya, and form respectively the 4th, 5th, and 9th part of the SaỊāyatanavagg0, which itself forms the fourth part of the Saṁyutta Nikāya.

Having been led by Capt. Durand's discoveries at Bahrein to look into the question of the antiquities of the Persian Gulf, I have been surprised to find how much new and interesting matter relating to this region has been accumulated since Vincent and Heeren conducted their investigations into “the commerce and navigation of the ancients”; and although, therefore, I have not sufficient leisure at my command at present to work out the inquiry as it deserves to be worked out, I have still thought that the notes collected during my desultory reading might be usefully submitted to a meeting of this Society, both with a view to the partial illustration of the subject, and more especially in the hope of suggesting lines of research to other and more competent students.

General Cunningham's Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, a real boon to all who are directing their attention to the study of Indian antiquity, contains amongst other revised copies those of the separate edicts at Dhauli and Jaugada. Owing to important corrections introduced into the text, much of what formerly was utterly unintelligible has become tolerably clear. It cannot be denied that many difficulties are left; but the greater their number, the more it would seem desirable that those who have studied these interesting documents should make public the results of their labours.

In a Report recently sent to the Government of Madras on antiquities discovered at Bēzwaḍa, and the Rock-cut Temple at Uṇḍavilli (both on the Lower Kṛishṇā in South-Eastern India), I devoted considerable space to the question of the identity of the former place with the capital city of Dhanakacheka as described by Hiouen-Thsang. I do not claim to be in any sense considered as the originator of this discovery, Mr. Fergusson having previously pointed out, first the likelihood, and afterwards the certainty, that the two places were identical.

The Kakhyen or Singpho are the most numerous people occupying the mountainous region stretching from Upper Assam across Northern Burma beyond the Chinese boundary into Yunan. In Burma they extend as far south as Momeit and Theinni.

During the last forty years, at different times, more or less attention has been called to this interesting people. On the Assam side, Hannay, Robinson, Bronson, Brown and Dalton, and on the Burman side, Anderson, Bowers, and Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries have published sketches of their language and mode of life.

In 1877 I had the pleasure of presenting to the Society M. Sauvaire's translation of the curious treatise on weights and measures by Már Eliyá. That translation was founded on the Paris MS., which presented some considerable lacunæ; the whole of Chapters V. to X., and portions of Chapters XI. XII. and XIII., being missing. These M. Sauvaire has now been able to supply from a Gotha MS., which Dr. Pertsch was so good as to copy for him. I prefix to this supplementary translation part of M. Sauvaire's explanatory letter.

My object in the following paper is to give a brief account of the wild tribes dwelling in the tract of country lying between the Brahmaputra and the Kaiendwen, Namtonai, or Ningthi, as it is indifferently called, the great western branch of the Irrawaddy.

I shall not attempt to give any description of the manners and customs of these tribes, but shall confine myself to indicating the localities which they inhabit, their probable numbers, their principal villages, and the names by which they are known among themselves and to the people of the plains; this last is very important, as many instances have occurred where inquirers working in different parts of the same country have described what is essentially one and the same tribe under different names, and the result has been that people residing at a distance have in more than one instance supposed them to be distinct tribes.

In a paper published in volume xlvii. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, I attempted to identify the nationality of some foreign figures depicted in the rock-cut caves at Ajantá. The conclusions I arrived at were:—

1st. That the figures with long flowing coats and sugarloaf hats in one of the pictures were Persians.

2nd. That the principal personages in three “Drinking scenes” were Bactrians.

3rd. That the scenes represented phases of Indian life from 1800 to 2000 years ago.

Dear Sir, — You have requested, me to write some account of the work which I have in hand concerning the Libyan languages. I cannot satisfy myself without a rather lengthy introduction, which must begin with some account of my sources of knowledge. It may be best to open these historically.

Venture de Paradis, Professor of Turkish in the Paris School of Living Languages, initiated the study of the native language spoken on the highlands and slopes of Mount Atlas. He was well acquainted with Arabic and Persian, and was selected by Napoleon the First as “Secretary Interpreter” to the Chief of the Army in Egypt. The celebrated Amédée Jaubert, his successor in the Turkish Professorship, gives high testimony to his powers and activity.

The following notes on Indian Chronology were written in 1874, and were originally intended for the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, they were printed off, I received a letter from Dr. Bühler, of Bombay, in answer to one I had written to him, on hearing a rumour that he had found Kanishka's name in one of the Puranas. I consequently refrained from publishing them, till it was known what bearing this discovery might have on the questions at issue. In order to ventilate the question, however, I had them printed, and in March, 1875, circulated them among my friends. As nothing has since been heard of Dr. Bühler's discovery, and recent excavations in Afghanistan throw new light on the question, I now submit them for republication where they were originally intended to appear.