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very well aware of the fact that the speech of the people of Fergana was Iranian, for he stated in his report, that, although there were different dialects in the tract of land stretching from Fergana westward as far as Parthia (An-si), yet their resemblance was so great that the people could make themselves intelligible to each other.' This is a plain allusion to the differentiation and at the same time the unity of Iranian speech;= and if the Ferganians were able to understand the Parthians,

I do not see in what other language than Iranian they could have conversed. Certainly they did not speak Greek or Turkish, as some prejudiced theorists are inclined to imagine.

The word brought back by Can K`ien for the designation of alfalfa,

and still used everywhere in China for this plant, was mu-su   0,
consisting of two plain phonetic elements,' anciently *muk-suk (Japanese moku-huku), subsequently written t with the addition of the classifier No. 14o. I recently had occasion to indicate an ancient Tibetan transcription of the Chinese word in the form bug-sug,4 and this appears to come very near to the Iranian prototype to be restored, which was *buksuk or *buxsux, perhaps *buxsuk. The only sensible explanation ever given of this word, which unfortunately escaped the sinologues, was advanced by W. TOMASCHEK,5 who tentatively compared it with Gilaki (a Caspian dialect) bûso (" alfalfa"). This would be satisfactory if it could be demonstrated that this bûso is evolved from *bux-sox or the like. Further progress in our knowledge of Iranian dialectology

Annam and the Annamese (cf. Cam Yuan or Yuön, Bahnar, Juön, Khmer Yuon, Sties Juôn). This native name, however, was adapted to or assimilated with Sanskrit Yavana; for in the Sanskrit inscriptions of Campa, particularly in one of the reign of Jaya-Rudravarman dated A.D. 7092, Annam is styled Yavana (A. BERGAIGNE, L'Ancien royaume de Campa, p. 61 of the reprint from Journal asiatique, 1888). In the Old-Javanese poem Nagarakrtagama, completed in A.D. 1365, Yavana occurs twice as a name for Annam (H. KERN,Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde, Vol.LXXII, 1916, p. 399). Kern says that the question as to how the name of the Greeks was applied to Annam has not been raised or answered by any one; he overlooked the contribution of Bergaigne, who discussed the problem.

1 Strabo (XV. 11, 8) observes, "The name of Ariana is extended so as to include some part of Persia, Media, and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana; for these peoples speak nearly the same language."

2 Emphasized by R. GAUTHIOT in his posthumous work Trois Mémoires sur l'unité linguistique des parlers iraniens (reprinted from the Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Vol. XX, 1916).

3 The two characters are thus indeed written without the classifiers in the Han

Annals. The writings tic g *muk-suk of Kwo Po and *   *muk-swok of Lo
'Than, author of the Er ya i (simply inspired by attempts at reading certain meanings into the characters), have the same phonetic value. In Annamese it is muk-tuk.

4 T`oung Pao, 1916, p. 500, No. 206.

6 Pamir-Dialekte (Sitzber. Wiener Akad., 188o, p. 792).