Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/455

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 447 and one reference only to each page. This gives a total of 10,000 proper names that the strongest digestion must assimilate apart from the question of fitting in the Chinese ideographs to perhaps half of them before a firm hold on the panoramic detail can be obtained : this metabolic hold M. Cordier himself obtained in great measure from his famous Biblio- theca Sinica (1904-8), supplemented a few years later by the Lndo-sinica and Japonica. M. Cordier does not confine himself to mere history as a record of specific political events ; he discusses the original spiritual conceptions of the Chinese mind, the effect thereon of foreign religions such as Buddhism, Nestorianism, Manicheism, Islam and the relations with Rome of the earlier Mongol emperors ; he also gives us pretty complete skeleton accounts of the earlier European diplomatic missions, and tells us much about native Chinese science and art ; in a word, the general reader will find the fourth volume, which covers the ground of special interest to most Europeans i.e. the period 1821-1921 as interesting and readable as the first volume is ' impossible ', the two intermediary volumes being chiefly of interest to severe specialists. E. H. PARKER. South India and her Muhammadan Invaders. By S. KRISHNASWAMI AIYANGAR, Professor of Indian History and Archaeology, University of Madras. (London : Milford, 1921.) PERHAPS it is not often realized that the sovereign under whom Mohamme- dan rule attained its furthest limits in India was not one of the Moguls, but Mohammed Ibn Tughlak, who reigned from 1324 to 1351. The process whereby Mohammedan invaders entered Southern India, the sultanates which they established there, and the events which led to the termination of those sultanates, constitute a subject well worthy of a monograph, and Professor Aiyangar has provided one which is likely to win general recognition as a most valuable supplement to the chronicles of India. For the history of the Mohammedan conquerors, which occupies the second half of this volume, the Persian chronicles, with the narrative of the traveller Ibn Batuta, form the main source of information ; they are, however, supplemented, interpreted, and occasionally corrected from Indian epigraphy and numismatics, which serve as the chief source in the first half of the volume, wherein the political conditions of South India which preceded the invasions are described. In obtaining the archaeological results which are embodied the author has himself had a share. Great trouble has been taken by him to identify the localities named by his authorities, and the varieties of pronunciation of the same names by different reporters make this a matter of great difficulty. Thus he unhesi- tatingly identifies the Chirichirapali of an inscription with Trichinopoly, which he makes the scene of a battle stated by the Arab traveller to have been fought at Cobban. The latter is found by him in the name Kannanur- Koppam of an inscription, whence it would appear that Ibn Batuta's Cobban is the same as Kannanur. The first invasion of Southern India is described as a raid for the sole purpose of obtaining plunder ; but when once this source of wealth had