Dr. B.G. B^BiNGTO^s Account of Sculptures, Sgc. at Mahdmalaipur. 2()9 



It is to be regretted that these inscriptions, instead of containing general 

 information respecting the origin or date of the sculptures, are merely 

 epithets applicable to the figures over which they are placed. At the same 

 time we should remember that their brevity and position, having led to the 

 assumption that they were names of deities, thus rendered the task of 

 decyphering them somewhat less difficult. Unimportant as they are in 

 themselves, a knowledge of them may lead to the acquirement of useful or 

 curious information to be drawn from other sources, and I trust that the 

 Society will indulgently consider the utility of this research, not so much 

 with reference to the information actually obtained, as to its general sub- 

 serviency to the pui"poses of history. 



There are certainly no historical monuments in India more decidedly 

 authentic than the copper and stone inscriptions found in such abundance 

 in many parts of the country, and it is advancing one step to have deter- 

 mined that these, however different the characters in which they are sculp- 

 tured from those in use at the present day, are all in the Sanscrit language, 

 in which so little change has taken place in the lapse of ages, that, when 

 once we have succeeded in the task of decyphering, all difficulty is at an 

 end, and the record of a remote antiquity is placed intelligibly before us. 



These inscriptions, and those at Kenerah in the island of Salsette, one of 

 which, with the modern Sanscrit, and a translation, I laid before the Society 

 on a late occasion, are perhaps the most ancient, at least the most dissimilar 

 from characters at present in use, which I have met with ; and I think 

 myself therefore warranted in concluding that there are no inscriptions of 

 Hindu origin to be found in India which may not, by attentive study, 

 be decyphered, and by the assistance of learned natives, afterwards 

 interpreted. 



With a view to rendering the characters of these decyphered inscriptions 

 generally appUcable, I have added two tables (P/. 18) : the one containing 

 all the characters found in the inscription in the Gams' a Pagoda ; the other, 

 those met with over the basso-relievo figures on the Rafhas. 



