OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY. SIXTH VOLUME. STANFORD LIBRARY NEW HAVEN: FOR THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY, MDCCCLX. SOLD BY THE SOCIETY'S AGENTS: NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY, 56 WALKER ST.; •Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year face, by the AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY,: in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut. CONTENTS Page. THE BALANCE OF WISDOM, AN ARABIC WORK ON THE WATER- BALANCE, WRITTEN BY AL-KHÂZINÎ IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. By the Chevalier N. KHANIKOFF, Russian Consul General at Tabriz, II. OBSERVATIONS ON THE PREPOSITIONS, CONJUNCTIONS, AND OTHER PARTICLES OF THE ISIZULU AND ITS COGNATE LANGUAGES. By Rev. LEWIS GROUT, Missionary of the A. B. C. F. M. in South Africa, 129 ART. III. TRANSLATION OF THE SÛRYA-SIDDHânta, a Text-BOOK OF HINDU ASTRONOMY; with Notes, and an Appendix. By Rev. EBENEZER BURGESS, formerly Missionary of the A. B. C. F. M. in India, ART. IV. Two SANSKRIT INSCRIPTIONS, ENGRAVEN ON STONE: the Original I. Inverted Construction of Modern Armenian. By Rev. ELIAS RIGGS, D.D., 565 II. On Dr. S. W. Williams's Chinese Dictionary. By Rev. WILLIAM A. IV. EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE: 1. From a Letter of Rev. Justin Perkins, D. D., of Orúmiah,...... 574 2. From a Letter of Prof. C. J. Tornberg, of the University of Lund, 574 3. From a Letter of Rája Rádhákânta Deva Bahâdur, of Calcutta, 575 4. From a Letter of John Muir, Esq., D.C.L., of Edinburgh (to F. E. ARTICLE I. ANALYSIS AND EXTRACTS OF کتاب میزان الحکمة BOOK OF THE BALANCE OF WISDOM, AN ARABIC WORK ON THE WATER-BALANCE, WRITTEN BY AL-KHAZINÎ IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. BY THE CHEVALIER N. KHANIKOFF, RUSSIAN CONSUL-GENERAL AT TABRÎZ, PERSIA. Presented to the Society October 29, 1857. [OUR correspondent having communicated his paper to us in the French language, accompanied with the extracts in the original Arabic, we have taken the liberty to put it into English, and have in fact retranslated the extracts rather than give them through the medium of the French version. M. Khanikoff's own notes are printed on the pages to which they refer. To these we have added others, relating to the original text and its contents, which are distinguished by letters and numerals, and will be found at the end of the article.-COMM. OF PUBL.] THE scantiness of the data which we possess for appreciating the results arrived at by the ancient civilizations which preceded that of Greece and Rome, renders it impossible for us to form any probable conjecture respecting the development which our present knowledge might have attained, if the tradition of the discoveries made by the past in the domain of science had been transmitted without interruption, from generation to generation, down to the present time. But the history of the sciences presents to us, in my opinion, an incontestable fact of deep significance: the rediscovery, namely, in modern times, of truths laboriously established of old; and this fact is of itself enough to indicate the necessity of searching carefully in the scientific heritage of the past after all that it may be able to furnish us for the increase of our actual knowledge; for a double discov |