The cut on p. 159 presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent.  This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mirs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838.  It is now in the India Museum.  On the bottom is punched a word or two in Pehlvi, and there is also a word incised in Syriac or Uighur.  It is curious that a pair of paterae were acquired by Dr. Lord under the circumstances stated.  The other, similar in material and form, but apparently somewhat larger, is distinctly Sassanian, representing a king spearing a lion.

Zu-’lkarnain, “the Two-Horned,” is an Arabic epithet of Alexander, with which legends have been connected, but which probably arose from the horned portraits on his coins. [Capus, l.c. p. 121, says, “Iskandr Zoulcarnein or Alexander le Cornu, horns being the emblem of strength.”  —­H.  C.] The term appears in Chaucer (Troil. and Cress. III. 931) in the sense of non plus:—­

  “I am, till God me better minde send,
  At dulcarnon, right at my wittes end.”

And it is said to have still colloquial existence in that sense in some corners of England.  This use is said to have arisen from the Arabic application of the term (Bicorne) to the 47th Proposition of Euclid. (Baber, 13; N. et E. XIV. 490; N.  An. des V. xxvi. 296; Burnes, III. 186 seqq.; Wood, 155, 244; J.  A. S. B. XXII. 300; Ayeen Akbery, II. 185; see N. and Q. 1st Series, vol. v.)

NOTE 2.—­I have adopted in the text for the name of the country that one of the several forms in the G. Text which comes nearest to the correct name, viz. Badascian.  But Balacian also appears both in that and in Pauthier’s text.  This represents Balakhshan, a form also sometimes used in the East.  Hayton has Balaxcen, Clavijo Balaxia, the Catalan Map Baldassia.  From the form Balakhsh the Balas Ruby got its name.  As Ibn Batuta says:  “’The Mountains of Badakhshan have given their name to the Badakhshi Ruby, vulgarly called Al Balaksh.”  Albertus Magnus says the Balagius is the female of the Carbuncle or Ruby Proper, “and some say it is his house, and hath thereby got the name, quasi Palatium Carbunculi!” The Balais or Balas Ruby is, like the Spinel, a kind inferior to the real Ruby of Ava.  The author of the Masalak al Absar says the finest Balas ever seen in the Arab countries was one presented to Malek ’Adil Ketboga, at Damascus; it was of a triangular form and weighed 50 drachms.  The prices of Balasci in Europe in that age may be found in Pegolotti, but the needful problems are hard to solve.

  “No sapphire in Inde, no Rubie rich of price,
  There lacked than, nor Emeraud so grene,
  Bales, Turkes, ne thing to my device.”
      (Chaucer, ’Court of Love.’)