6 Letters of Sir Wirt1am Jones to Samvet Davis, Esq. 
VII. 
‘Aarif-nagar : 
5 April 1789 
Dear Sir 
Mr. Harington has taken your dissertation to have it copied, and when 
the copy is finished I will send it to you, that you may give it the last 
stroke of your accurate pen. Your observations on the work of Brahma- 
gupta, compared with the Siéirya Siddhdnta, are curious and important. I 
wish to know on what authority you assert that BuAscar AcnArya wrote 
1710 years ago: the Persian translator of his Lildwati says, “ This book 
«“ has no date; but the Carnacutrihal, or Delight of Ears, another work of 
« BuAscana, is dated in the 1105th year from king Saca, or SALIVAHAN ;” 
if that be true, the Zndian philosopher must have flourished about 606 
years ago, since we are now in the 1711th year of Saca. When you read 
the Siddhdnta Siromani (mentioned in your Pandit’s useful list of names 
and terms of science), you will meet with some very curious passages con- 
cerning the ancient Geography of India. 
The second volume of the Transactions is in the press, and by way of 
frontispiece to it, we shall all be much obliged to you for your sketch of 
the ruins at Mavalipuram, which Mr. Daniell will etch, when he returns 
from his excursion up the country. 1am greatly obliged to Mr. Saunders 
for his information concerning the Jatdmdasi or spikenard: pray ask him 
(with my best compl") whether the curled locks of it, which the druggists 
sell dry, are the roots of the Baccharis, or only bundles of fibres shooting 
from the bottom of the stem. The Europeans, I find, who never saw. the 
fresh plant, are divided in opinion as to this question. Linnaeus makes the 
spikenard an Andropogon ; and Iam glad to be set right by such an au- 
- thority as that of Mr. Saunders. We will summon the Society to read your 
paper, as soon as it has been correctly copied. 
I am, dear Sir, 
Your faithful and 
obed! Serv! 
W. JONES. 
