60 G. A. Grierson — Beport on investigation at BodTi-Gaya. [APRTt, 



rims are chipped off. As all masons' marks appear to have been on 

 the northern rim, there is none visible. 



No. 7. — The whole of the south side of this base knocked off. The 

 north side is complete and the rim bears clearly the letter clia. The 

 orientation of this base is not quite in line with that of the rest. 



No. 8. — Badly damaged. The whole of the south side knocked off; 

 also the northeni and western rims. Cunningham says that this base 

 bears the letter ja. There is no trace of this letter, nor, as the 

 fractures are evidently very old, can I understand how it can have 

 been on its usual place on the north side when he saw it. 



Nos. 9 and 10 are mere fragments of the plinths on which the 

 bases stood. 



No. 11. — Cunningham says that this base bore the letter ta. There 

 is now no trace of this letter. The base is badly damaged, the south- 

 west side and nearly the entire rim having been knocked off. The 

 top of the rim bearing the northern orientation mark still exists, and 

 we should find the mason mark under this. Unfortunately the lower 

 part of this rim, where the mark should occur, has been chipped away. 

 The fi^acture looks comparatively recent. 



To sum up. I think it may be assumed that all these pillar bases, 

 both on the south and on the north side, had masons' marks. There 

 were eleven bases on each side. Of those on the south side (of which 

 eight are still buried in the Temple wall and one, oi% perhaps, three 

 in the Indian Museum) the first (western) base was marked with the 

 letter a and is now exhibited in Calcutta. There is no evidence as to 

 what letters the other bases bore, and Cunningham's statement that 

 they bore the letters a, i, i, u, u, e, at, o, an, ah, cannot be supported. 



On the north side the first (western) base has ka, and the seventh 

 has cha ; cha is the seventh consonant of the Sanskrit alphabet and the 

 sixth of the A9oka alphabet. If, therefore, the pillars are in their 

 original order, as Jagannath Siggh states, this tends to prove that 

 Sanskrit was a written language when the masons made the marks. 



On the other hand, the letter which Cunningham appears to have 

 read as gn, and which he says he saw in its right alphabetical place on 

 the third base, is really on the fifth base, and, if it is ga, is not in 

 correct alphabetical order. If therefore the reading' is correct, the 

 bases were either not originally set up in alphabetical order, or have 

 since been interchanged. In either case their value as regards the 

 history of the Indian alphabet is very small. 



The letters ya and ta seen by Cunningham are no longer visible. 



The importance of these bases rests on the correct reading of the 



