lfc)92-93.] THK BUDDHIST IN'SCKIPTKJNS OF INDIA. 261 



A NEW READING OF THE BUDDHIST INSCRIPTIONS 



OF INDIA. 



By John Campbell, LL.D., 



Corresponding Member Anjurnani Punjab of Lahore, etc., Projessor in 



the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 



( Read jrd December iSgz.) 



Those who have made a study to any extent of the early history of 

 India cannot fail to have been struck with its shado'-vy indefiniteness 

 down to the time of the Mohammedan conquest, in the eleventh century. 

 The two native chronicles, the Raja Tarangini of Cashmere, and the 

 Mahavansa of Ceylon, are little less doubtful authorities than the 

 ancient epics, and the Puraiias or mytholofjical treatises. Abul Fazl, 

 the other Mohammedan historian, and the Chinese Buddhist pili^rims 

 add little that is trustworthy. When, therefore, it was known, through 

 the labours of General Cunningham and his officers of the Archaeological 

 Survey, that ancient inscriptions abound in the sites of ruined cities and 

 towns, great expectations were raised in the breasts of enquirers after 

 historic truth, and a solution was looked for of those difficulties which 

 compelled the translator of Lenormant's Ancient History of the East to 

 omit the chapters on the history of the Indians. " To the book on the 

 ^ History of the Indians,' however, serious exception has been taken, not 

 from any want of ability in M. Lenormant's treatment of the subject, 

 but from a distrust of the reality of the foundation on which all the 

 history of Ancient India rests.''^ It was confidently hoped that the read- 

 ing of the inscribed monuments would remove the cause of this distrust, 

 but such has not been the case. 



The most important, because the most ancient, of these inscribed 

 monuments are known, from their structure and from the emblems which 

 accompany them, to be of Buddhist origin. The written characters 

 engraved upon them have been, therefore, called Buddhist, and they con- 

 stitute what is sometimes termed the Lat Alphabet, because many of 

 the inscriptions in them are found on lats or pillars. This alphabet is 

 square, as is the modern Hebrew, but has no connection with it, nor 

 with any other alphabet, Semitic or Aryan. Nevertheless, it appears to 

 have been the foundation of the Sanscrit or Devanagari characters, and 



