It is greatly to be wished that some competent Chinese scholar would take up the sieu as Weber took up the nakshatras in his essays published in the Transac tions of the Berlin Academy for 1860 and 1861, making a like thorough exhibition and discussion of their character and aspect as exhibited in the Chinese literature. Although we have no right to hope that it would cast valuable light on the ultimate origin of the institution, it would at least lay a solid foundation, such as is now painfully wanting, for the study of this important element in the ancient Chinese science.

In connection with this subject, it may be well to call attention for a moment to the untrustworthy manner in which nearly all questions relating to the ancient Hindu astronomy and its connection with chronology are treated by Lassen, even in the second edition of his great work, the Indische Alterthumskunde. He is apparently too unfamiliar with astronomical discussions to be able to use the various materials which have been published on the subject, distinguishing the false from the true, the unsound deductions from the sound. But he is also unreasonably careless; as this example, among others, will show. "It is," he says (i. 983), "a remarkable circumstance, that the description of the equator in the SuryaSiddhânta corresponds to the year 2350 or 2357 B. C. How this phenomenon is to be explained, I must leave to the astronomers." And he refers, as authority for the astonishing statement, to the Society's Journal, vi. 467 and viii. 157 (where doubtless, for 157, we are to read 37). But as the Siddhânta does not describe any equator, and as there is nothing on the two pages quoted, or anywhere else in the Journal, in the most distant manner intimating that it does, or connecting anything in the treatise with the date specified, the astronomers will do well to decline the task thus put upon them.

Again, I objected, some years ago (Journal, viii. 68, note), to Lassen's assertion in his first edition that Colebrooke had "shown" (dargethan) the Arabs to have received their lunar zodiac from the Hindus; now, in the second (i. 979), he declares Colebrooke to have "proved” (nachgewiesen) the same thing. The fact is simply that Colebrooke, after really "showing" or "proving" the Hindu and Arab zodiacs to be varying forms of one system (a fact which had been doubted or denied before), declared that he thought it more probable that the Arab system came from the Hindu than the contrary; and, though he later repeated the same opinion in a more confident tone, he never entered into any argument upon the matter. He was not in a position successfully to discuss and solve the question; and his mere expression of opinion, in virtue of the great additional light since cast on it, especially by the bringing in of the Chinese sieu as third term in the comparison, has no authority whatever.

Once more, Lassen pronounces (i. 607, note) the accuracy of Pratt's determination of the date of the Jyotisha as 1181 B. C. to be beyond doubt or question. This is perhaps less to be wondered at. Considering the rarity and preciousness of a definite date in ancient Hindu history, we must not expect to put down this one, with however good argument. For two or three generations longer, at least, it will continue to be claimed, either that the date of the Jyotisha, by scientific demonstration, is precisely 1181 B. C., as determined by Jones and Pratt, or that it is precisely 1391 B. C., as determined by Davis and Colebrooke. It will not be possible to make people see that both these dates are just equally valuable— or worthless. Yet the argument lies in a nutshell. In about the sixth century after Christ, having learned scientific astronomy from the Greeks, the Hindus made observations on the positions of 28 stars. as measured from the vernal equinox of that period. These observations are so coarse and inexact as to show an extreme discordance of 54 from one another, when tested by our modern methods: and each one of them, used as a starting-point for chronological calculations, will give a different result, the extreme results being about four centuries apart. Davis and Colebrooke took one star of the twenty-eight, and it brought them, they thought, to 1391 B. C.; Pratt took another, and it brought him to 1181 B. C.; still others might have been taken which would have given as result 940 B. C.; and the rest would fall in here and there between these extreme dates. And behind this uncertainty of four centuries there remains still the fact that the attempted measurements are from the equinox of the 6th century of our era, which we have no reason for regarding as having determined the asterismal division of fifteen or twenty centuries earlier-even if there had been any precise system of division

then, which there was not, and could not have been. The Jyotisha is in reality utterly worthless as determining any date in Hindu history, and the sooner Indian scholars come to recognize the fact, and cease to lean on such a broken reed, the better will it be for their study.

4. On the Phoenician Inscriptions in the Cyprus Collection of Di Cesnola, by Rev. W. H. Ward, of New York.

Among the objects collected by Consul Di Cesnola in Cyprus, and now deposited in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, are a number of fragments of marble engraved with Phoenician letters, and a very few earthenware jars with brief Phoenician inscriptions. One of the latter, and most of the former, have been published in fac-simile by Dr. Paul Schröder, author of the Grammar of the Phoenician Language. They had previously been examined by Prof. Rödiger, but his copies do not seem to be exact, and I have not seen them. My object is simply to add a few brief inscriptions not already given by Schröder.

As described by him, the two larger inscriptions are on cubes of marble. Others are on the flat upper rim of marble basins, a foot or two in diameter, which were placed as votive offerings in a temple at Citium. The inscription contained the date, being the regnal year of the king Melchiyathon, or Pumiyathon, his son who reigned in the fourth century B. C., and the latter of whom is identified with the Pymathos of history. The inscriptions are generally but fragments, of a very few letters, and add almost nothing to history. The god Resheph is confirmed. Schröder's "No. 15" should receive the addition of a fragment (Fig. 1) containing the two letters conjectured by Schröder, namely, 1, giving the whole

.May Melkarth bless • [מלקרת יברך

On a fragment of the polished rim of a gypsum bowl is found the following inscription (Fig. 2), not given by Schröder. [][] King of Citium and Idalium.' It is remarkable for nothing but for the delicacy of the inscription. which is simply scratched with a point on the polished gypsum, and is as perfect as when first made. It is an extremely fine specimen for giving the exact shape of the letters in their thinnest outline. We notice here very distinctly the peculiar shape of, found also on the long inscription (Di C. 1), given wrong by Schröder in his plate, and differing sharply from any form given by Schröder in his GramIt is made with the right hand perpendicular line completely disconnected from the other two. The fact that the same form is found in Di C. 1 is evidence that this also belongs to the reign of Pumiyathon. In the inscription of Melchiyathon we have the ordinary shape.

mar.

On the rim of another bowl we find the following (Fig. 3):

.To my lord Eshmun Melcarth [לאדני לאשמן מלקרת]

Besides these. there are new inscriptions on three earthen jars or vases. The inscription on all of these is written carelessly and baked in the clay. That given in fig. 4 is y, my master,' or possibly a mere form of Baal.' It is on a jar over two feet high, ending in a point below. Fig. 5 represents a jar of similar size and shape, with an inscription in three lines, illegible in the sixth letter of the first line, and with the fourth letter of the same line doubtful. It reads as follows:

-Baal - בעליל. | יתן | שמעי |

....

The name of the god is not determined, and appears to differ from any of the familiar forms of Baal.

The inscription on the very beautiful vase given in Fig. 6 has its first letter partly covered by the lower circle of the ornamentation. I am utterly unable to give a satisfactory or even a plausible reading of it.

5. On the Pseudo-Phoenician Inscription of Brazil, by Rev. W. H. Ward.

Dr. Ward added to his preceding paper a few remarks on the so-called Phoenician inscription of Brazil, speaking nearly as follows:

A year or two ago, the Brazilian papers reported the discovery at a place called Parahyba of a Phoenician inscription. It has since been published in fac-simile

in the number for April 23, 1874, of the Portuguese illustrated paper. O Novo Mundo, published in New York; the fac-simile is accompanied by a Portuguese translation. It is so inherently improbable that a Phoenician inscription should appear in Brazil. that we are justified in receiving this one with great skepticism. An examination of this inscription does not relieve it of the suspicion of forgery. The language is not that of other Phoenician inscriptions, but is a mixture of Hebrew and Chaldee. The appearance of rhy Darby is alone enough to condemn it as a forgery, this form being evidently copied from Gesenius, as a restoration from Plautus. The true Phoenician would be ny Dy. Such forms as and y are inadmissible, and the appearance of the word for 'ten' in two forms, wy and Dy, is very suggestive of a careless Jewish forger. The occasion of this forgery may be conjectured to be the bitter contest going on for some time between the clergy and the freemasons of Brazil, whom the priests have excommunicated, and to whom they have denied Christian burial. It is not unlikely that some unscrupulous person should have concocted this inscription, recording that King Hiram's subjects entered Brazil, for the purpose of connecting the land with the reputed founder of freemasonry.

At this point the Society took a recess, reassembling at 2 o'clock P. M., when the reading of communications was resumed.

6. On Recent Discussions as to the Phonetic Character of the Sanskrit Anusvára, by Prof. W. D. Whitney.

The nasal utterance called the anusvára, Prof. Whitney said, is an element in the Sanskrit system of articulate sounds as to the value of which there has prevailed some doubt and difference of opinion. Was it a nasal tone accompanying the utterance of a vowel, a nasalization of the vowel, as in the ordinary French pronunciation of en, on, un? or was it a distinct nasal utterance following the vowel? This difference of opinion began with the Hindu grammarians themselves. Of the four Prâtiçakhyas, one, that to the Atharvan, takes the former view, acknowledg ing only nasalized vowels in its alphabet; another, the Taittiriya-Prâtıçakhya, is uncertain and inconsistent; it acknowledges an anusvára as independent alphabetic element, but when it should come to prescribe it as occurring in certain situations, it prescribes the nasalized vowel instead, and merely adds that some teach a nasal utterance after the vowel instead of in and with it. The other two acknowledge both nasalized vowel and separate nasal, but teach the latter in the great majority of cases: the Vâjasaneyi-Prâtiçâkhya, again, mentioning authorities that hold the other view. The predominance of authority, it is seen, is on the side of the anusvára as appendage instead of accompaniment to the vowel. And this view is adopted by Pânini, and so becomes the orthodox doctrine of later Hindu grammatical science.

Of course, now, this difference of opinion may be the result of an actual difference of pronunciation of the element in question in various parts of India, or schools of Vedic study. But, as I hold, it is equally obvious and undeniable that it might be the result of a different apprehension and theoretical explanation of the same utterance-such as is not infrequently met with among the Hindu phonetists on other points also; not to speak of the differences even among the best modern European scholars, as regards, for instance, the distinction between surd and sonant consonants, or the question whether the nasals n and m are explosives or not. Nor are we driven to accept as conclusive on the subject the final unanimity of the later Hindu grammarians; in the ever-increasing artificiality of the scholastic pronunciation of a dead language, it is by no means impossible that a false theory should finally prevail, and should come to govern the later utterance: there are striking illustrations of this, as I think, in other parts of the Hindu system.

In a note on a passage of the Taittiriya-Prâtiçâkhya (ii. 30: p. 66 ff.), I set forth the discordance of the authorities, pointed out the alternative ways in which it could be explained, and, without assuming to decide the case, indicated my provisional inclination to regard the discordance as due to a difference of apprehension rather than of utterance, and, as between the two views, to side with that of the