S20 Sir W. Elliot on Denholm and its Vicinittj. 



the published essay on the Indo-Chinese tongues, a task 

 which, had he been spared, he would doubtless have com- 

 pleted. 



His literary remains were bequeathed to his early friends, 

 the late Richard Heber and William Erskine, the latter a 

 school-fellow with whom he renewed his intimacy at Bombay. 

 Under these auspices, some of his papers, Avith a sketch of 

 his life by the Rev. James Morton, appeared in 1819. His 

 Malay annals with a slight introduction by Sir Stamford 

 Raffles was published in 1821, and the commentaries of Sultan 

 Baber translated from the Turki, edited and completed by 

 Mr. Erskine, were not allowed to see the light till 1826. 



These posthumous works appearing at longinteivals, show 

 what an amount of materials he had collected and whet the 

 desire to know what remains. "Besides translations from 

 Persian, Arabic, and Sanscrit," says Mr. Morton, "there are 

 among his Mss. many valuable philological tracts, and several 

 grammars completed ; particularly one of the Malay language 

 and of the Pracrit. To the latter work he had been prompted 

 by his friend Mr Henry Colebrooke, who has since expressed 

 his satisfaction with Leyden's execution of this arduous 

 and useful labour."* "The number and variety of the 

 literary undertakings of that extraordinary man," writes 

 Erskine, ^^many of them conducted far towards a conclusion, 

 would have excited surprise had they been executed by a 

 recluse scholar who had no other public duty to perform," &c.t 

 We know that he had devoted much time before sailing to 

 Batavia, to a dissertation on the Indo-Persian, Indo-Chinese, 

 and Dekhani languages, of Avliich no trace has been found, a 

 loss deeply to be deplored. ij: In a letter to John Ballantyne, 

 written from Penang in 1805, he refers to translations of some 

 ancient inscribed copper-plates in possession of a colony of 

 Jews who had been settled at Cochin for 2000 years. These 

 had long excited the curiosity of scholars, being in a language 

 and character now almost obsolete. Translations of these 

 were printed in a Madras local journal by two eminent scho- 

 lars, the late F. W. Ellis and the Rev. Dr. Gundert, both 

 made many years subsequent to Leyden's death.§ He further 

 states that he had deciphered the inscriptions at Mavalipuram 

 on the Seven Pagodas near Madras, more recently read by Dr. 

 B. Babington, and published in the Transactions of the Royal 



* Poetical Remains, by Morton, 1819, p. Ixii. 



f Introd. Coram, of Baber. 



X Calc. Rev. XXXI., 31. 



§ Madras Jour, of Lit. and ?c., vol. XIII., p. 115, also vols. XX and XXI. 



