This article is the first publication of the Bogra copperplate, the eighth known land-grant inscription issued by Śrīcandra (r. c. 925–975 ce), one of the kings of the Candra dynasty of Bengal. A diplomatic transcription is included, together with an annotated English translation and a critically edited text in Devanāgarī. The inscription describes a gift of land to a Brahmin named Śrīkaradatta Śarman, who probably hails from North Bengal (“Hastipada [in the region of] Śrāvasti”). While the praśasti (praise) portions largely parallel the king's other known inscriptions, the inscription contributes new information about place names and regions associated with the Candra dynasty, as well as attesting the movements of Brahmins associated with the Parāśara Gotra and Chandoga Caraṇa. The article also provides an overview and assessment of research on the inscriptions and history of the Candra dynasty, particularly in light of the discovery and identification of this new inscription.

In 1767 Sir William “borrowed from Dr. Russel and copied the keys of the Chinese language, which he wished to learn” (Life, p. 78). In 1770 he wrote to Count Reviczki, “I succeeded in comparing one of the Odes with the version of Couplet and analysed every word, or more properly every figure in it.” Couplet's version (in Latin) had appeared about a hundred years previously. This is presumably the Ode that Sir William subsequently turned into Latin verse (Works, vol. x, p. 317). Reviczki replied (possibly with slight irony), “Pray inform me when you learned the Chinese language. I did not suspect that this was one of your accomplishments; but there are no bounds to your acquisitions as a linguist.” In 1771 Sir William writes to a friend, “I am sorry the characters you sent me are not Persian but Chinese, which I cannot decipher without a book which I have not at present.” It does not appear that after this period Sir William was ever able to devote time to Chinese linguistic studies. But in a “memorandum on objects of inquiry during my residence in Asia” which he drew up when on his way to India in 1783, he included “The Shi-King or 300 Odes”. The list was a very varied one, and also included “Britain discovered, an Heroic Poem on the Constitution of England. Model, Homer”. In 1790 he undertook to give the second Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His subject was The Chinese. His sources dated chiefly from the end of the seventeenth century. He seems to have been unaware of the Mémoires concernant les Chinois, the bulk of which had already appeared. He told his audience (Works, vol. iii, p. 147), “Their philosophy seems yet in so rude a state as hardly to deserve the appellation,” and “of painting, sculpture, or architecture, as arts of the imagination, they seem (like other Asiatics) to have no idea”. He had probably not seen the essay, “Sur les beaux Arts de la Chine et principalement sur l'Architecture” that had appeared in Lettres d'un missionaire à Pekin, in 1782. Much of the rest of the discourse seems to be still founded on Couplet.

The famous manuscript in Kharoṣṭhī script which contains an anthology of Buddhist verses similar to the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Pali Dhammapada became known first in 1892, when portions came into the hands of MM. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard in Khotan. They were told that the MS. had been found in the ruins of the Vihāra at the Gośṛnga hill (on this site see M. A. Stein, Ancient Khotan, pp. 185 ff.). Other portions were acquired by the Russian Consul-General in Kashghar, M. N. Th. Petrovskii, and were sent by him to M. S. F. Oldenburg in St. Petersburg in February, 1897. In the same year, 1897, M. Oldenburg prepared a photograph and transcription of one folio of the St. Petersburg collection, which was published and presented by the Oriental Faculty of the University of St. Petersburg to the Eleventh International Congress of Orientalists held in Paris in 1897 (Predvaritel'naja zametka o buddijskoj rukopisi, napisannoj pismenami Kharoṣṭhī, St. Petersburg). Meantime, also in 1897, the portions of the MS. which had been brought to Paris were placed in the hands of M. Émile Senart, who published his reading and interpretation of the MS., with five facsimiles, in the Journal Asiatique (1898, ii, pp. 193–308). He used in addition to the text published in facsimile a large number of small fragments, and was also able to add the readings of that part of the St. Petersburg manuscript which contained half-lines fitting into his fragment B. M. Senart remarked that the portion of the MS. in St. Petersburg was more extensive and better preserved than the portion in Paris.

The Lotuko language as here set forth is spoken by about 40,000 people, all of whom, with the exception of a few hundreds in the Opari district of Mongalla Province and the Chua District of Uganda, live in the district of that name.

The scarceness of published material renders difficult a true estimate of the development of political ideas in Egypt in the nineteenth century. Nor is it any less difficult to trace the origins of the first political parties.

The Arabi Rebellion of 1881-1882 was preceded by a long period of unrest, which finally crystallized in a self-styled National Party. This faction, led by army officers and civilians, kept its secret character for a few years, coming into the open only at the beginning of the Arabi Rebellion. Its importance in the anti-foreign struggle, however, has drawn attention to its humble but interesting origins. Research has provided us with fairly adequate, if still incomplete, material on this point. But hardly anything has been published, on the other hand, about another secret organization of that time, called ‘Young Egypt’.

This poem is mentioned by Steere (in the Preface to his Swahili Tales, p. xii) in the following terms: “I should have been glad to have exhibited the whole of the ‘Utenzi on Job’, which was the best I met with, but my authority could give me no more than the beginning, my copy breaking off short in the council of the fiends as to how to avail themselves of the permission to vex Job [st. 37–46]. The stanzas I have printed [1–6 in an imperfect form] are followed by a confession of God's greatness and a long commemoration of Mohammed, his family, and chief followers. Then there is an account of Job's prosperity, mentioning, amongst other things, the ducks and fowls which he had; then the colloquy between Satan and the Almighty, and the planning of the temptation. The language of this Utenzix is singularly clear and intelligible.”

Mr. Burrow's interpretation (supra, Bulletin, p. 514) of the word hinajhasya in No. 661 of Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions … transcribed and edited by A. M. Boyer, E. J. Rapson and É. Senart involves a number of conjectural or improbable elements.

In 1983 Monika Höhlig published a pamphlet (reprinted in 1990) setting out her ideas for producing a romanized script for (North-West Caucasian) Circassian. Since the bulk of the Circassian community lives not in the Caucasus but in Turkey (or elsewhere in the Near East), her basic tenet was that, where necessary, the roman characters should have the same values that obtain for the purpose of representing Turkish—so that, for example, the letter c would represent the voiced palato-alveolar affricate []. Two further principles which guided the creation of this script were: (a) that any attempt to provide one totally independent character for each phoneme of the language would lead to an unwieldy number of new letter-shapes, and (b) that no diacritic should be employed that is not available on a Turkish typewriter.

It is now generally admitted that a great deal of the ancient and medieval myth and legend enshrined in the Sanskrit epics and Purānas is of non-Aryan origin, and that even in Vedic mythology certain pre-Aryan elements are present. Puranic myths of the godsand legends of kings, heroes, and sages, in the form in which we find them in the Sanskrit works, represent undoubtedly a considerable amount of modification from their original forms, whether Aryan or non-Aryan: witness, e.g., the treatment of what would appear to bea genuine Aryan (? Indo-European) saga-that of Purūravas and Urvaśī, as we find it in the Rigveda and the Śatapatha Brāhmana, in the Visnu Purāna and in the subsequent Puranas.