161 Rajendralala Mitra — On a Coin of Kunanda. [August, 



" If the age of Kunanda is rightly determined (which of course is still 

 a very open query) we may justly infer that the Bactrian Pali had not yet 

 penetrated in force, as the official alphabet, as far as the banks of the Jumna. 



" These points being conceded, I may readily accept your reading of lew 

 for both versions ; but I have a surprise for you, in the fact that a new coin 

 of Col. Guthrie gives the name +^cJY S-unindasa, as in the tribal name 

 noticed in your P. S. 



" In common consistency having surrendered the r in the name, I 

 am bound to do the same with the title, though I would point out 

 to you, that the Sanskrit " adages" about brothers hardly apply to 

 this case, unless you can make the king a representative Indian Aryan. 

 We have plenty of instances in proximate localities and not distantly re- 

 moved periods, where the title of Brother appears in high honour. For in- 

 stance, the AAEA^OY TOY BA2IAELD2 (p. 205 Prinsep's Essays), Maha- 

 raja JBhrata (p. 203), Spahora Bhrata (p. 201), and Godopliara Bhrata, 

 with AAEA3>IAIELU2 (p. 216). 



" You enquire what my opinion is about another paper of yours, in re- 

 spect to the Saka dates. I have always stood up for the extended applica- 

 tion of the Saka era in early documentary monuments, and especially in 

 Gupta djmastic inscriptions, but I discriminate between the mere use of 

 such dates in the Gupta proper documents, and the post Gupta references 

 implied in " after the repose of Skanda Gupta," and the 585 years of the 

 Guptas having elapsed (J. R. A. S., (old series) Vol. XIII, p. 5, note ; 1850,) 

 both of which points have been alluded to in my Indian Weights (note, 

 p. 46). I do not see that the new translation of the Gupta passage from 

 Albiruni at all alters the main inference, that the Vallabhis succeeded the 

 Guptas, which fact is all that we need really care for. 



" M-r. Burnell has been so obliging as to send me a copy of his " South- 

 ern Indian Palaeography" in which he contests my, what he calls, lately pro- 

 pounded theory about the Lat alphabet (p. 6). But our Bengal friends have 

 only to be told, that he quotes Prinsep solely from our Journal of 1837 (Vol. 

 VI, pi. xiii), seems never to have seen Prinsep's collected Essays, and knows 

 nothing of the later labours of Norris, Wilson, Dowson, Cunningham, &c, 

 to understand how unsafe a guide he is likely to prove in demonstrating the 

 rise and progress of the earlier Northern alphabets of India." 



Babu Bajendralala Mitra said that it was very gratifying to him to 

 note that the reading and translation of the Kunanda coin, which he had 

 suggested, had met with the approval and suppoi't of so distinguished an 

 antiquarian as Mr. Thomas. He concurred with Mr. Thomas in the opi- 

 nion that the Indian Pali was the leading and dominating alphabet, and 

 that the Bactrian character was subsequently adapted to the vernacular of 

 the time, very much in the same way, he thought, as the Arabic character 



