712 



RUSSIA. 



Europe and India ; " besides other papers on 

 subjects of less general interest. General dis- 

 cussions were held on the special codes of laws 

 dictated by the founders of the nomad em- 

 pires in Central Asia ; as to whether or not a 

 Mongol tribe or people existed before Genghis 

 Khan ; on the origin of the Turkish manu- 

 scripts in tne so-called Vigur character; on 

 the Central Asiatic calendars, and their rela- 

 tions to Chinese and Persian records ; and on 

 the Sogdian character and monuments. 



In the Caucasian section (3), M. Gamaroff 

 presiding, Prof. Gregorieff made an address on 

 the Caucasian race and its origin, and M. Ber- 

 ger described several ethnographical objects 

 which were exhibited in the Caucasian collec- 

 tion on view in the rooms of the Ministry of 

 the Interior. 



In the seventh section (Turkey), Ahmed 

 Vefyk presiding, papers were read, or re- 

 marks made, on '' The Ancient History of the 



VTINTEB PALACE, ST. PETERSBUKG. 



Slavs," by M. Harkary ; on "The Khazars," by 

 M. Ho worth ; on " The Present State of Popular 

 Education in Siberia," by M. Mourkos; and 

 on certain special works pertaining to Arabian 

 literature and history. Ahmed Vefyk Effendi 

 spoke on the question, " How far the mutual 

 .relations of the Arabic tribes before Moham- 

 med threw light on the political state of the 

 Israelitish tribes at the time of the Judges." 



In the fifth section (Eastern Asia), Prof. Leon 

 de Rosny presiding, papers were read by M. 

 Makhow on "Japanese History and Tradition," 

 in which he placed the beginning of the histor- 

 ical period of Japan at about 600 years B. o. ; by 

 Prof, de Rosny, on " The Possibility of recon- 

 structing the Chinese Language as spoken dur- 

 ing the Han Dynasty, or e\en previous to that 

 Period;" by M. Vassilieff, on "The Chinese 

 Language, its Ideographs," etc. Prof, de Rosny 

 spoke of the theory of the discovery of Amer- 

 ica by the Chinese before Columbus, which is 

 founded upon an ancient Chinese account of a 



voyage to Fusang. "With reference to the hy- 

 pothesis in this theory, that the distances men- 

 tioned by the Chinese authors in describing 

 the voyage to Fusang would make that coun- 

 try near America, the speaker pointed out that 

 the Chinese li, the measure of distance men- 

 tioned in the account, was much larger now 

 than formerly, and that a corrected calculation 

 of the li would bring Fusang within the con- 

 fines of Asia. 



In the sixth section (India and Persia), Prof. 

 Kern presiding, papers were presented on Dr. 

 Leitner's " Comparative Grammar and Vocab- 

 ulary of the Languages between Cabool, Ba- 

 dakhshan, and Cashmere ; " by A. Marre, on the 

 "Javanese, Mazache, and Malay Languages;" 

 by Th. Bakouline, on "The Routes to Meshed;" 

 by Baron Textor de Ravisi, on " The Mural In- 

 scription of the Pagoda of Oodeypore ; " by J. 

 Duchaetan,on "The Pretended Egyptian Origin 

 of the Chinese ; " by M. Raverty, on " Sanskrit 

 Words in the Pushtu Lan- 

 guage." Prof, de Gube- 

 matis presented his work 

 on "The Materials for a 

 History of Oriental Stu- 

 dies in Italy," and the 

 section discussed a num- 

 ber of special questions. 



In the section on Sibe- 

 ria (1), M. Vassilieff pre- 

 siding, papers were read 

 by M. Slovtsoff, on "The 

 History of Public Instruc- 

 tion in Western Siberia; " 

 by M. Neumann, on " The 

 Tchonktchis, or People of 

 Northeast Siberia ; " by 

 M. Sobruk, an Ostiak gen- 

 tleman, on " The Idol- 

 worship of the Ostiaks 

 and Voguls ; " by M. 

 Slovtsoff, on " The Prov- 

 erbs, etc., of the Kirghiz 

 People ;" and on special subjects. The section 

 discussed the numerous emigrations which are 

 said to have taken place during two thousand 

 years from Siberia into Central Asia, the cir- 

 cumstances which had produced the over- 

 growth of population which had led to them, 

 and the causes of their cessation. 



In the Transcaucasian section (4), Prof. Pat- 

 kanoff presiding, M. Berger gave an account 

 of the poetical productions of the Persian 

 province of Azerbijan. M. Schmidt, of Ge- 

 velsberg, drew attention to the striking anal- 

 ogies in the languages of the aboriginal Ameri- 

 can tribes with those of the Armeno-Caucasians, 

 which, he said, were altogether too intimate, 

 too frequent, and too decided, to allow of the 

 entertainment of any hypothesis of accidental 

 similarity. The date of the composition of 

 the geography attributed to Moses of Khorene, 

 and the so-called Armeniac cuneiform texts, 

 which, however, have no affinities with the lan- 

 guage known as Armenian, were discussed. 



