400 ON AKCIENT MONUMENTS. 



But it is not my present purpose to enter on an exami*. 

 nation of published monuments, but to urge the com- 

 munication of every inscription which may be hereafter 

 discovered ; at the same time, that I lay before the 

 Society copies and translations of those which have been 

 recently communicated from various parts of India, 



It is a subject for regret, that the originals, of which 

 versions have before been made publick, are not depo- 

 sited where they might be accessible to persons engaged 

 in researches into Indian literature and antiquities : but 

 much more so, that ancient monuments, which there 

 is reason to consider as important, have been removed 

 to Europe, before they had been sufficiently examined, 

 or before they were accurately copied and translated. 

 I may specify, with particular regret, tlie plate of cop- 

 per found at Benares^ and noticed by Capt. Wilford 

 in the present volume of Asiatick Researches (p. 108.) ; 

 and still more a plate which has been mentioned to me 

 by a learned Pandit^ (who assured me that he was em- 

 ployed indecyphering it) '^, and which appears, froni 

 a copy in his possession, to have contained a grant of 

 land by the celebrated Jayachandra, when a young 

 prince associated to the empire of his father : from this 

 mformation it seems to have been particularly valuable 

 on account of the genealogy comprised in it. 



Translations might indeed be made from the Pan- 

 dit's copyoVthe last mentioned plate, and from one taken 

 by alearned native in Capt. WiLFORo'sservice, from the 

 plate discovered at Beuares. But my experience of the 

 necessity of collating thecopies made by Xhthtst Pandits, 



• Servouu TrivedI ; the same wlio assisted me in decyphering 

 the copy of an inscription on FiRoz Shah's pillar at Delhi. As. 

 Res. vol. 7. p. 180. 



