No. 57.— 1906.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



21 



advantage., I think, pass through the hands of our Council (of 

 which Mr. Anthonisz is a Member) and into the Journals of the 

 Society. Meantime special interest attaches to the Memoir 

 left by Jacob Christian Pielat to his successor Diedrick Domburg, 

 1734, translated by Miss Sophia Pieters, with an Introduction 

 and Notes by the Ceylon Government Archivist, and lately issued 

 from the Government Press. This has been the subject of a 

 generally favourable if discriminating review by Mr. Donald 

 Ferguson, who suggests that transcripts of the ear her Dutch 

 Governors' Memoirs, which no longer exist among the Ceylon 

 archives, might be got from The Hague ; or, if they do not exist 

 there, that translations of the portions printed by Valentyn 

 would to some extent supply the deficiency. 



Although the year of its publication is 1904, mention should be 

 made of the first part of so important a work in connection with 

 our Archaeological Survey as the Epigraphia Zeylanica, being 

 lithic and other inscriptions of Ceylon, edited and translated by 

 Don Martino de Zilva Wickremesinghe, Epigraphist to the Ceylon 

 Government and Librarian and Assistant Keeper of the Indian 

 Institute, Oxford. The further Parts of this valuable work will 

 be welcomed by all interested in the past history and monuments 

 of Ceylon. 



Professor W, Geiger has published in German a critical account 

 of the Dipawansa and Mahdwansa,* which forms a sort of prole- 

 gomena to his forthcoming and eagerly anticipated critical edition 

 of the Mahdwansa. An English translation, I am glad to say, is 

 being made by Mrs. Coomaraswamy, and will be published by 

 Government in 1907, the consent of author and of publisher having 

 been received. Professor Geiger promises to add a special pre- 

 face to the English edition. 



The work of the " Pah Text Society " in England must always 

 be of interest to this Society, and a connection is kept up through 

 on© of our Members, Mudaliyar E. R. Gooneratne being the 

 Honorary Secretary in Ceylon. The Ceylon Government, too, 

 is a subscriber for twenty copies of all the Society's publications. 

 The recent receipt of the sixth volume with indexes for our Library 

 shows us that up to the end of 1904 this Text Society, in the 

 twenty-three years of its existence, dealt with 43 texts and issued 

 55 volumes with 16,000 pages. The programme for 1905-07 

 includes much that is of special interest. 



There are interesting popular papers included in some of the 

 volumes in our Library, which ought to be consulted ; for instance, 

 Mr. Rhys Davids has " Some Notes on the Political Divisions of 

 India when Buddhism arose," from which we learn, for the first 

 time, that the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival, side 

 by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of Republics with 

 either complete or modified independence. Mrs. Rhys Davids, 

 too, occasionally contributes versions of amusing " Jataka or 



* Dipawansa und Mahawansa und die geschichtliche iiberlieferung 

 in Ceylon," von Wilhelm Geiger, Leipzig, 1905, M. 4-50. 



