This is to probe the authenticity of this inscription by philological, linguistic and paleographic studies.
There are many pre-Columbian texts from various parts of America, but most of them are more or less unintelligible. A notable exception turned up by the inscription found in 1872 under strange circumstances. In the 19th century, the text was discussed pro and con, and the weight of scholarly opinion finally rejected the text as a fake. Competent Semitists expunged it from the list of authentic texts, however, the text is now intelligible to any modern scholar who knows Hebrew and Phoenician and other semitics by our presenting a lot of materials having been excavated since 1872.
Now we appreciate that the role of the Phoenicians, as intermediaries of ancient civilization, was greater than has been supposed.

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There are about 11 days between the solar year and the lunar year, and about 5 days between the solar year and the 360-day year. Later calendars of various areas of the world have remainders of the 5th day, the 10th or the 13th day New Years, while some nations have remainders of the archaic New Years of the 8th or the 13th day of the 12th month. Iranian people who adopted the 365-day vague year calendar suffered inconvenience after many years as al-Beruni has remarked some hundred years after. It is probable that astronomers observed five fixed points on the ecliptic and made them available for the farmers. These fixed points are the five gasanbars which the writer has tried to interpret philologically and ethnologically.
The ancient Iranians had the ten days' end of the year as well as the five days' one, the Hamaspathmaeda feast, in the last five days of the year. It is evident that there was a Harmageddon (Armageddon) battle of the good and the evil in Iran too, as the Gatha points out, and as a ritual there should have been a mock battle among the Zoroastrians to pass the eschatological end of the year. The writer furnishes an ethnographical proof that the Hamaspathmaeda feast must have been a feast where the fathers back from heavens fought against Ahriman's army and people played a drama realizing the battle.

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Some scholars such as S. M. Kaplan, H. H. Von den Osten and R. Heine-Geldern already pointed out the possible existence of the relation between the so-called “black” pottery of prehistoric China and the similar pottery of prehistoric Iran, and even suggested the origin of the former pottery to the latter. These arguments are very attractive, but as S. Masuda has remarked, there are yet too scarce of positive proofs to demonstrate these inferences, though the existence of tripods in Li and Ho shapes which are generally supposed as rather peculiar in prehistoric China among the so-called Amlash pottery, seems to affirm at least the indirect relation between the “black” pottery cultures of prehistoric Iran and China.
Here I treat these pottery cultures of East and West not through the monochrome, but through polychrome pottery.
Since about 1960, there have appeared many polychrome and monochrome pottery in Tehran curios market, which they refered to the finds from Sakizabad not far from Kazvin southwardly.
The painted pottery of Sakizabad show not so many kinds of shape: pots with a short neck, a round body and a wide mouth, pots like cups with a small base and a handle at one side near the mouth, bowls with a carinated body and a small base, shallow bowls and dishes are most commonly seen (Pls. I-IV, VI-XIII). The pots, shallow bowls and dishes are often supported by three legs (figs. I-4, V-4), and the pots have sometimes on both-sides of their shoulders a pair of lugs with a small hole for a string to pass through in order to suspend the pottery (Pls. II, III).
The Sakizabad painted pottery seem to show the fabrication not by the method of potter's wheel, but by the ring-method or direct hand-make, because of their uneven surfaces and considerably irregular shapes. The temperature of their firing must have been rather low, the quality of the pottery being soft, porous and rough. The surface of the pottery seems in the majority of cases to be covered with a thin coating of “slip” in whitish or reddish colour.
Decorative paintings on slip are applied mostly on the outer surface of the pottery, but also on the inside surface in the case of shallow bowls and dishes. According to the construction and colour of the painted designs, the Sakizabad painted pottery are roughly divided into two groups. The first group is characterized by its bold stroke of painting on the whitish slip surface of comparatively thicker wall of the pottery (Pls. I-V figs. II-1, III-3, IV-2, V). The common designs of the first group are: triangle, rhomb, meander, zig-zag lines, twined wavy lines, all arranged in horizontal bands, which divide the whole or the larger parts of the outer surface of the pottery, and swastika-like geometric designs and asterisk designs are also seen on the inside surface of the pottery (figs. V1, 4).
The common colours of their paintings are: black, red and gray, tinged sometimes with purple, brown or yellow. Three or more colours are applied so often in this group of the Sakizabad painted pottery.
The second group is characterized with the designs drawn by fine stroke in multiple lines on whitish or reddish slip surface of the comparatively thin wall of the pottery. The common designs of this group are: so-called staircase design, checker, rhomb, meander and meander-like geometric designs, zig-zag lines, wavy lines and x-shaped lines, all arranged in horizontal bands which cover the larger part of the outer surface of the pottery, and fantastic, highly stylized zoomorphic designs and asterisk designs together with rhombs and zig-zag lines freely drawn on the inside surface of the pottery (Pls. XIV right, XV). The common colours of their paintings are: black, red and gray tinged with purple or brown. In this group of the Sakizabad painted pottery, black paintings are seen both on reddish and whitish slip, while red paintings are only on whitish slip as general rule.
The

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After linguistic criticisms on the opinions thus far proposed concerning Old Persian ardastana-, I have come to the conclusion that the word may be interpreted as treasure-place, i. e. treasury. O. P. arda- is a derivative of ard-, Ind. rdh- v. i. “to become large, prosperous, rich”, so also the Neo-Babylonian version kuburre of KBR “to become large”. The argument may be vindicated from the view-point of architecture. Comparatively small as it is (30m×40m), the palace is divided into 17 sections, excluding the portico. This very fact is a clear witness to the palace's having been intended as treasury as a whole. Besides, practically all of the 17 sections behind the niches inscribed are small treasuries. A file of servants represented on the southern stairway seem to show them transferring the tributes from, most probably, the Tripylon to the Treasury Ardastana. Lastly I have cited Denkard passages (a) and (b) (see above p. 138ff.). The text (a) says that Šabuhr I investigated the establishment of a Whole Treasury concerning the Mazdayasnian Religion (astenidan i hamag ardestan abar den mazdesn o uskar kerd) while in (b) the Whole Library of the Capital (+hamag diwan i-s dar) is referred to as a depository of the Original Denkard manuscript. The parallelism between both expressions, hamag ardestan and hamag diwan concerning the same functional structure seems to show my interpretation of ardestan as treasury to be correct. And if so, O. P. ardastana-, of which the Middle Iranian continuation is ardestan (or alestan), means inevitably treasureplace, i. e. treasury.

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Circumstantial evidence is, as Dr. Soheil M. Afnan points out, in favour of Ibn al-Nadim's statement that Khalid b. Yazid b. Mu'awiya was the first to order the translation of Greek and Coptic books on medicine, astronomy and alchemy into Arabic; yet these precursory translators could not find their immediate successors. The intellectual awakening, which began with the establishment of the Abbasid dynasty and resulted in the brilliant age of translation, was a natural outcome of secretarial translations from Pahlevi under the late Umayyads. The present writer attempts to collect sporadic informations on earlier Arabic translators and on Pahlevi translation of Aristotelian logics by way of Syriac in the Sasanid period.

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When we discuss the role of the Muslim world in the cultural interaction between the East and the West, it is necessary to take into consideration the influences which the civilization of Islam has received from other civilizations as well as those of Islam upon others. Many attempts have been made to clarify how Sufism came into being in the Islamic spirituality. Some attribute its origin to Christian influences; some to Neo-platonistic, some to Buddhistic, some to the Vedanta, and others explain it in terms of the indigenous development of primitive Islam. It is my present objective to review those major studies done so far which conclude that Sufism originated mainly under the influence of Indian thoughts including Buddhism, and to point out some problems involved in the study of the cross-cultural interaction of ideas.
It is Alfred von Kremer who first asserted seriously the Indian origin of Sufism in 1868. He characterized the current of the Sufi thought from al-Muhasibi through al-Hallaj as “pantheistic”, and thus tried to see its origin in Indian “pantheism”. This thesis laid the foundation for the subsequent study of Sufism, and was adopted by R. Dozy and I. Goldziher in its main contention. It found its most vigorous protagonist in R. Hartmann and M. Horten, and recently in R. C. Zaehner.
The common drawback in all these theses, however, is that the factual and historical supports which they enumerate for their contentions are not convincingly strong enough. In other words, there is seen in them somewhat naive supposition that “similarity” of ideas is necessarily due to cultural interaction or influence. What needs to be done hereafter is not only to search for the factual grounds of the Indian origin of Sufism, but also to make a closer and more systematic comparative study of the two cultural traditions, one of which may have influenced the other. This methodological reconsideration is particularly needed in the study of mysticism, which shows fascinatirgly similar quality among different religious traditions.

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To secure the dominations over the Mediterranean including Aegean or Adriatic shores, Red Sea and Indian Ocean, Ottoman Turks had to hold naval power, since the end of 15th century, well-known admirals came into existence one after another. Pirî Réis was one of those famous Turkish seamen and admirals like Barbaros Hayrettin or Seyd Ali Réis.
The writer has already examined biography of Pirî Réis, and his life work, “Kitabi Bahriye”. This paper deals with only the part of Çin Deniz (the China Sea) written in Nazim. This part contains an account of the China Sea and considering that part of the world as the extremity of the East. It gives several interesting informations on the life of Chinese people, their customs, traditions, and their technical skill on ceramics. It also relates the Portuguese sailor's stories based on fantastic rumours. These rumours beara close resemblances to some paragraphs of old Chinese Classics, “Shan hai ching”.
In summary, this paper intends to translate the Turkish Nazim concerned into Japanese and to research for relations with Portuguese monopolistic and exclusive policy to Eastern products.

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