Deceased Felloios : — Mr. James Prinsep. 65 



His activity whilst resident at Benares has more the air of ro- 

 mance than reality. He designed and built a mint and other edi- 

 fices; he repaired the minarets of the great mosque of Aurengzebe, 

 which threatened destruction to the neighbouring houses; he drain- 

 ed the city and made a statistical survey of it, and illustrated by his 

 own beautiful drawings and lithographs the most remarkable objects 

 which the city and its neighbourhood contains ; he made a series of 

 experimental researches on the depression of the wet-bulb hygro- 

 meter; he determined from his own experiments the values of the 

 principal coins of the East, and formed tables of Indian metrology 

 and numismatics, and of the chronology of the Indian systems and 

 of the genealogies of Indian dynasties, which possess the highest 

 authority and value. 



When transferred to Calcutta, he became the projector and editor 

 of the " Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal," a verj' voluminous 

 publication, to which he contributed more than one hundred articles 

 on a vast variety of subjects, but more particularly on Indian coins 

 and Indian Paleeography. He first succeeded in deciphering the 

 legends which appear on the reverses of the Greek Bactrian coins, 

 on the ancient coins of Surat, and on those of the Hindoo princes 

 of Lahore and their Mahomedan successors, and formed alphabets 

 of them, by which they can now be readily perused. He traced the 

 varieties of the Devanagari alphabet of Sanscrit on the temples 

 and columns of Upper India to a date anterior to the third century 

 before Christ, and was enabled to read on the rocks of Cuttock 

 and Gujarat the names of Antibchus and Ptolemy, and the record 

 of the intercourse of an Indian monarch M'ith the neighbouring 

 princes of Persia and Egypt ; he ascertained that, at the period of 

 Alexander's conquests, India was under the sway of Boudhist sove- 

 reigns and Boudhist institutions, and that the earliest monarchs of 

 India arc not associated with aBrahminical creed or dynasty. These 

 discoveries, which throw a perfectly new and unexpected light upon 

 Indian history and chronology, and which furnish, in fact, a satisfac- 

 tory outline of the history of India, from the invasion of Alexander 

 to that of Mohanmied Ghizni, a period of fifteen centuries, are only 

 second in interest and importance, and we may add likewise in 

 difficulty, to those of Champollion with respect to the succession of 

 dynasties in ancient Egypt. 



These severe and incessant labours, in the enervating climate of 

 India, though borne for many years with little apparent inconveni- 

 ence or effect, finally undermined his constitution ; and he was at 

 last compelled to relinquish all his occupations, and to seek for the 

 restoration of his health in rest and a change of scene. He ar- 

 rived in England on tiie 9th of .January last ; but the powers both 

 of his body and his mind seemed to have been altogether worn out 

 and exhausted ; and after lingering for a few months, he died on the 

 2'2n(l of Aj)ril last, in the forty-first year of his age. The cause of 

 literature aiul arciia'ology in the East could not have sustained a 

 severer loss. 



Sir Anthony Carlislk was born at Stillington, in the county 

 of Durham, in tin? year 1768. After commencing his professional 

 riiil, MiKj. S. :J. Vol. 1 8, No. 1 1 1. Jun, 1 U\ . V 



