Khuddaka Páṭha, or “Lesser Readings,” is one of the books of the Buddhist Scriptures. It is the first of the fifteen divisions of Khuddaka Nikáya, and immediately precedes Dhammapada, The text which I have adopted is that of a manuscript written and collated for me by a Singhalese priest of great learning. I have compared with it the Burmese manuscript belonging to the collection presented by Sir A. Phayre to the India Office Library. This, however, I found to contain numerous clerical and other errors, and it failed to supply me with a single corrected reading.

Guza. a Throne.—Very frequent in the inscriptions. It always has the sign , the determinative of “wooden objects,” prefixed to it. I believe it to be a mere dialectic variation of the Hebrew solium regium (etiam Dei.— Jerem. iii. 17). In shurrat sarti-ya, sha as guza sarti rabish usibu; In the beginning of my reign, when I sat proudly on my royal throne.—Obel. line 22. Izpa u guza likim-su; Sceptre and throne may they take from him.—R42,73. Guza abi-su; his father's throne.—2R 38,32. Guza billuti; throne of power.—R39, 9. Guza nimidi; a palanquin.—R39, 36.

Every one who has turned his attention to the study of Indian antiquities will probably be inclined to admit that one of the most important desiderata at the present time is a scheme of Chronology which shall fix, within reasonable limits of error, the dates of the Tarious kings or dynasties who ruled between the Christian Era and the Hegira. It is not at present indispensable that any particular king's reign should be ascertained within ten or twenty years of deviation either way; but it is hopeless to attempt to understand the subject while we cannot make up our minds whether the Balabhi kings dated their inscriptions from their own Era or from that of Vikramâditya—a difference of 376 years—or whether the Guptas dated theirs before or after the Era bearing their name (318–19 A.D.). While such discrepancies as these exist, it is idle to suppose we can either understand the history of the Hindus, or appreciate the forms of their arts, or the development of their religions.

One of the most interesting articles in the late Sir Henry Elliot's work, “The History of India as told by its own Historians,” is that which consists of extracts from Rashiduddin's Jámi'-ut-Tawárikh. A large part of that worthy's notices of India is indeed taken from Albiruni, but the concluding portion is presumably his own, and speaks of a state of things existing in his own time. It is to this portion of the article that the following observations refer. In the original edition of Sir Henry Elliot's work this was crammed with obscurities. Many of these have been removed by the recent editor, Professor Dowson, through the comparison of various MSS., but obscurities still remain. Eecent studies having directed my attention to this subject, I have been trying to clear these up. In many cases I have utterly failed; in some I trust to have succeeded in throwing a little light, and I venture to submit the result to the Society, in the hope that others, much more competent, will lend aid in cracking some of the hard nuts that are left.

In the preceding number of the Journal, this poem had reached the birth of Abraham: the portion contained in the present issue consists of the life of Abraham, the history of the line of Isaac ending with Jesus Christ, and the line of Ishmael down to Heshim, great-grandfather of Muhammad. The description of the sacrifice of Ishmael brings to mind the mysteries or plays in which Abraham's sacrifice of his son is still represented in Spain at the Church festivals.

Mr. Thomas has lately done good service to Pahlavî archæology, by collecting all the best copies of the Sassanian inscriptions, that are known to exist, from the various books of travels and unpublished papers in which they have hitherto remained comparatively hidden and neglected. If his tentative translation of the Hâjîâbâd inscription is likely to be less useful, it is probably owing to his treating the language as an unknown one, and only to be interpreted by a free use of all available lexicons, aided by a variety of hazardous guesses. But there is good reason for believing that the language of these inscriptions is not unknown, as the composition, or rearrangement, of most of the Pahlavî literature of the Parsîs, is traditionally ascribed to the time of the Sassanian rule; if, therefore, this tradition be correct, there ought to be a close resemblance between the language of the inscriptions and that of the Pahlavî books, after allowing for probable alterations made in the books, by successive copyists.

My attention had been for a long time directed to the immense mass of languages spoken in the Himalayas, when in 1866 I was appointed to the charge of the district of Champáran. This district lies at the foot of the hills, and its frontier is conterminous with that of Nepal for about a hundred miles. Through the kindness of Colonel G. Ramsay, Resident at the Court of Káthmánḍu I obtained from Maharaja Sir Jung Bahadoor, the de facto ruler of that country, two Magar soldiers, men of intelligence, and who spoke their native dialect with great purity. At the same time I accidentally took into my service two Gorkhális (Anglicé—Goor-khas) or Rajputs of the dominating or Khas race of Nepal. These men remained with me during several months of the cold season. We worked hard some hours each day, and I was getting on fairly with my task, when they suddenly, like all hill-men, got restless, and insisted on going back to their homes. The weather was getting warm (it was the first week in April), and I could not fairly detain them. Unfortunately I had only got as far as F in my dictionary. I had of course many words for the rest, but I had been going over it a second time, filling up gaps, and had made it pretty complete for the first six letters.

1. The Pagoda was built in the reign of king Bodo Piyah, in the Burmese year 1178 (A.D. 1816), by his grandson, Noungdau Gyee, now known as Bagyeedau Piyah, which specifies his relationship as paternal uncle to the present reigning king.

2. It is situated at Mengoon, on the west bank of the Irrawaddy, a couple of hundred yards only from the huge brick ruin which is known as the Mengoon pagoda.

On comparing with one another the two most ancient periods of development of the Iranian mind, in language as well as in literature,—that primitive one, whose witness is the Avesta, with the period of renaissance under Sasanian rule,— we find at once this striking difference, that the former is purely national and Iranian, almost wholly free from any foreign influence, whilst the latter, as it appears in the Pahlavi translations and the inscriptions of the Sasanian kings, is overwhelmed by foreign, Semitic, or more accurately speaking, Aramæan elements. The difficulties in explaining the pure Persian substratum of the language of this latter period, for even here not every problem has yet been solved, are by no means to be compared with those offered by the Semitic forms and words, which appear to the Indo-german linguist utterly unknown, to the Semitic scholar more than strange. Though a great quantity of highly valuable material has already been collected and digested by European scholars, still I do not think it sufficient to enable us to decide in a satisfactory manner the following questions:—During what time did that close intercourse between the Iranian and Semitic races take place, the existence of which we are compelled to assume as the source of the Semitic portion of the Pahlavi language? Of what kind was this intercourse? And with which of the Aramæan nations in particular? The same questions demand an answer, in order to explain the numerous Iranian words which occur in the literature of the Babylonian Jews, in Syriac, in the Koran, and the most ancient Arabic poems.

1. Victory to the Allsoul, the source of life, the inseparable ornament of heaven, the Sun, who is adorned with a crown of a thousand beams like unto liquid gold!

2. After studying the subject matter which former Seers have revealed with infallible truth, I purpose to treat of the same in an easy style, and in verses neither too few nor too many.

In the following paper some illustrations of the method by which the Lamaist succession in Tibet is perpetuated, are drawn from a work published within the last few years by a Chinese officer of high rank. Its author, Meng Pao, was chief of the two Imperial Commissioners or Residents stationed in Tibet in 1840–44, and on his return to Peking printed, for private circulation, a small volume containing his official correspondence with the Emperor Tao Kwang in the course of some five or six transactions connected with the administration of Tibetan affairs.

This subject is of some importance to persons who are resident in Mussulman countries, or our dominions in India, and a brief exposition of it may not be out of place in the Society's Journal.

Evidence is based on testimony, and testimony may be either direct to the point at issue, or to collateral circumstances from which the point at issue may be reasonably inferred. It were, perhaps, more correct to say, that in the latter case testimony is the channel through which evidence is conveyed to the minds of those who have to decide upon it, while in the former case it is the evidence itself. Under the most common systems of jurisprudence testimony of both kinds is received, and the judge is left free to form his own opinion from all the circumstances as detailed by the witnesses. Under other systems, while testimony is equally free, the decision upon it is committed to a separate tribunal, such as a jury. Under both systems there is, perhaps, an inclination to treat testimony, even when direct, as a mere channel of communication, and to take the fact asserted by the witness, entirely stripped of his opinion.

In a paper read to the Royal Asiatic Society towards the close of last session, I gave some account of the Mohammedan law of evidence in connection with the administration of justice in India. I now propose to offer a few observations on the same subject in its bearings on the administration of justice to foreigners in Mohammedan countries. As I shall have to contrast the notions of evidence which such persons may be supposed to derive from the laws of their own countries, with the Mohammedan system, and it may be convenient to run the contrast between only two systems at the same time, I will take our own countrymen as a type of foreigners in general, and I will assume that the ideas of evidence which they carry with them to other countries are the same as those which are prevalent in their own, and are derived from the practice of our courts of justice.

[The Royal Asiatic Society are indebted to Major F. W. Stubbs, R.A., for the illustrative materials of the following paper. The facsimile of the inscription has been executed in so perfect a form as to be freely legible to ordinarily practised eyes. As Professor Dowson had already distinguished himself in the decipherment of Bactrian Pali writing in his previous articles in this Journal, the explanation of this inscription was, as a matter of course, confided to him. The result appears below. The facsimile of the inscription itself has been reserved for publication, in association with the Mathura series alluded to by Professor Dowson.

Some months ago M. Wold. Tiesenhausen, Secrétaire de la Commission Archéologique de St. Pétersbourg, consulted me as to the attribution of a class of coins, representatives of which had newly been brought to light by the discovery, in the Government of Perm, of a small bronze vase containing four pieces of the type in question. M. Tiesenhausen forwarded at the same time impressions in tin-foil and rubbings on paper taken directly from the originals; but as these species of facsimile necessarily suffer from transmission by post, they furnished very unsatisfactory means of tracing the course of the singular and imperfectly-outlined marginal legends, which, in effect, constituted the real enigma to be solved. I therefore applied to my correspondent for more complete copies in less perishable materials, in the form of sealing-wax impressions or electrotypes. To my surprise, in reply I received the three accompanying excellent woodcuts, executed in the Russian Capital, together with engravings of two additional medals of cognate stamp, which, with considerable Numismatic acumen, had been traced in other accessible collections.