that his death has deprived us of the opportunity of hearing another address from him at this meeting, as he had offered to speak on one of his favourite subjects, the History of Coins.

As already announced on the notices of this meeting, Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. Gananath Sen Gananath Sen had accepted the invitation of the Council to deliver an address to-day, on the subject of Ancient Indian Medicine, but I regret to say that a telegram was received from him on Saturday last stating that owing to indisposition he cannot come to Patna, and asking that his apologies may be conveyed to the President and members of the Society.

Owing to his appointment as Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Professor Jadunath Sarkar, who has been a member of our Council from the commencement and has frequently contributed to the Journal in connection with his studies in Mughal and Mahratta history, has been compelled to resign. We have also lost, though fortunately only temporarily, the services of Mr. Horne, who as General Secretary since 1922 has done so much to bring the affairs of the Society into their present satisfactory condition.

From these topics, it is a more pleasant task to turn to the progress of the Society during the past year. As regards membership and finance, the usual reports of the Secretary and Treasurer, which are in the hands of members, show that we are at least maintaining our ground. During Your Excellency's term of office, the idea of a building for a Museum has, like other still larger proposals for the intellectual advancement of Patna as a provincial capital, evolved out of the stage of alternative schemes into that of a settled fact, and the Research Society has special reason to be thankful to Government for the decision that, in the building which is now rising above the ground on the Patna-Gaya road, a separate wing will be reserved for its office and records, for its meetings, and above all, for its library.

The value of any Society of this type must be judged mainly by two things, the quality of the library

The Library

provided for the use of its specialist

members and that of its Journal and other publications. This Society is still handicapped by its comparative youth, but this is an error which gradually corrects itself, and it has already shown that there is ample room for it in India. Our library is by no means large at present, for it contains less than 3,500 volumes, but it is unusually valuable for its size, and it now receives almost all the allied journals published in different parts of the world. These in particular are gradually being improved by purchase of back numbers where available, but it is obvious that the library still needs both further development and more publicity, neither of which is possible until the Society moves into its new home. The handsome donation of our latest Vice-Patron, the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj, announced last year is being kept as a nucleus for the former purpose, and a catalogue will be printed and supplied to members after the rearrangement of its contents which the transfer will entail. Our policy ought not to be one of attempting to compete with other local institutions, such as the Oriental and Sinha Public Libraries and those of the University and the attached colleges, in their wider scope, but one of continuing to specialise on definite lines, working in co-operation with these libraries in such a way that in a few years' time it be possible to offer in Patna to students of advanced Indology at least one copy of every important book which they may require.

may

Undoubtedly the most satisfactory feature of the year is the

The Journal

high standard maintained by our Journal, which continues to grow in reputation both in India and abroad, to an extent which may best be judged by the increasing number of references to its contributions in the leading publications of other learned societies. It has continued under the editorship of Mr. Jayaswal with the assistance of Dr. Banerji-Sastri, who has also undertaken the duties of Honorary Secretary during the al sence of Mr. Horne. All four issues have been duly brought out, and contain over 600 pages of original matter, as well as ten plates illustrating inscriptions, seals,

architecture and historical sites, and a supplement of 214 pages of critically edited text. The latter is the concluding portion of Bhaṭṭasvamin's word-for-word Sanskrit commentary on Kautilya's Arthaśāstra, mentioned in last year's review, and completed by the editors in the September issue. Messrs. Jayaswal and Banerji-Sastri are now preparing an introduction to their edition of the Commentary, which will be published shortly.

As regards the Journal itself, although the eleventh volume included the whole of our edition of Buchanan's Shahabad Journal as a double number, its successor exceeds it in size and still more in the number of contributions and variety of subjects with which they are concerned. After attempting to notice as many as twenty-six articles and sixteen miscellaneous contributions by twenty-three different authors in the manner usually adopted in the Vice-President's annual review, I find that it would be impossible to do the barest justice to them without extending my remarks on this occasion to undue length. In departing from the usual procedure, however, I must make an exception in the case of the two contributions received from our honorary members, because each of these in its own sphere settles a controversy of considerable local interest, and each pronounces judgment definitely against a theory which has hitherto held the field.

In 1914 the late Dr. Spooner discovered on the terrace at Kumrahar the remarkable terracotta plaque which is familiar to all our members, since in accordance with the opinion expressed by him in the very first article appearing in our Journal, it was accepted as a representation of the famous temple at Bodh Gaya, and as such has been reproduced on the cover of every issue. A year later, in the September number of 1916, the late Dr. Vincent Smith challenged this view, mainly on the ground that Hiuen Tsiang mentions two temples at the site, the earlier by Asoka having been replaced by one which the Chinese traveller himself saw and described, and that this did not agree with the representation on the plaque. Dr. Spooner in reply tentatively claimed the plaque as a

representation of the Asokan temple on the strength of the age of the Kharoṣṭbi script which it bears, but he added that "if ever the inscription can be read, the matter may be settled once for all." Dr. Sten Konow, who is editing the forthcoming Kharoṣṭhi volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, has made a careful examination both of the plaque itself and of photographs, and has published his reading in the June issue, as Ko[thuma sa] samghada[sa]sa kiti or "the work of Samghadasa, the Kauthuma." From the character of the script, which he assigns to the second or third century A.C., he concludes that "the so-called Bodh Gaya plaque was left in ancient Pataliputra by a Buddhist pilgrim from the north-west, where Kharoṣṭhi was the usual script."

Mr. Oldham's monograph on the battle of Buxar (October 23rd, 1764) is the work of a specialist on the subject, whose interest was first quickened by his accidental discovery in 189394, when Subdivisional Officer of Buxar, of the inscriptions on the tombstones of two of the chief generals of the Nawab Wazir who fell in that battle, Saiyid Ghulam Qadir and Sheikh Muhammad Isa, otherwise known as Shuja 'Quli Khan, now resting in the arms of a large banyan (bar) tree about eight feet from the ground, on the outskirts of the modern village of Katkauli; and also of the filled-up well called ganj-i-shahidan or" heap of martyrs", within a few yards of that tree. In addition to copies of these inscriptions and a photograph of the bar tree taken in 1917, Mr. Oldham has with the sanction of the Secretary of State reproduced a hitherto unpublished plan of the battle attached to the diary of Major Champion, Munro's second-in-command, in the Record Departinent of the India Office, and has supplemented it by other maps and plans drawn by himself, which show the present topographical conditions as well as the approximate positions of the contending forces. Every known source of information from both sides has been consulted in his description of the battle and of the events of the few days preceding it, and the evidence that the scene of the most severe fighting was east instead of west of Katkauli, and

that the present monument is about a mile too far west of its proper position, seems to be overwhelming.

Besides this article, matters connected with Indian History in the eighteenth century are dealt with in two papers by Ma L. Lockhart, a new contributor from Teheran, describing a rare Spanish account of Nadir Shah, and Mr. R. P. Khosla in a study of Mughal nobility. Doubtful questions of genealogy and tribal relations in medieval times are discussed by Messrs. Parmananda Acharya and Nalininath Das Gupta and by the Rev. H. Heras; and in a series of four papers Dr. BanerjiSastri goes back to the earliest period in seeking to reconstruct the history of the ancient Asuras from literary tradition.

Ancient Indian Mathematics, Philosophy and Geography are each represented by one contribution from Messrs. 8. K. Ganguly, H. R. Rangaswamy Iyer and Binyak Misra, respectively.

Religious and social history are the subject matter of two papers, one by Dr. Banerji-Sastri on the Ajivikas and the other by Mr. Manmatha Nath Roy on Ostracis in ancient Indian Society.

Anthropology and its kindred subjects et bnology and folklore are also strongly represented this year. Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Ray contributes four papers, three of which are a continuation of his enquiries among the Oraons of Chota Nagpur and the fourth deals with the small tribe calling themselves. Asurs, in the west of that division. There are also two contributions by the Rev. P. O. Bodding on Santhali, and in folklore no less than three by Mr. S. C. Mitra, two by Mr. S. N. Ray three by Mr. K. P. Mitra and one by Mr. S. C. Ghosh.

In Archæology the late Mr. Manomohan Ganguly was the author of three papers published in this year's Journal on the subject of Indian Architecture, Vedio and Post-Vedic. In Epigraphy in addition to Dr. Sten Konow's article, there is a short note by myself on a possible reading of the Karṇa Chopar inscription, and a paper by Dr. Banerji-Sastri on the possibility of Jain and therefore anti-Ajivika influence in this and other Barabar Caves.