24 ,Annual Address. [Feb. 



quities, especially Manuscripts, and we may look to this country for 

 many new and important discoveries. Dr. Hoernle, tlie decipherer of 

 the Bower Manuscript, was the first to recognise this fact, and it was at 

 his suggestion and through the influence of Sir Cliarles Lyall, who was 

 then the Home Secretary to the Government of India, that the Indian 

 Government issued orders to their Political Agents in Central Asia 

 to secure any specimens of manuscripts and antiquities that they might 

 hear of. The result has been a very large collection of Central Asian 

 antiquities, which from time to time have been sent to Dr. Hoernle to 

 be deciphered and identified, and to be finally deposited in (he British 

 Museum. 



The first report on some of these, by Dr. Hoernle, lias been 

 published as Extra Number 1 of Journal Part 1. It is illustrated by 

 19 plates, beautifully executed in photo-etching by the Survey of India 

 Office, at the expense of tlie Indian Government. The Government also 

 very liberally contributed a sum towards meeting the additional expenses 

 involved in printing the text of this Report, which is devoted to coins, 

 Keals, and intaglios, and block-prints. The coins are very numerous and 

 of various designations — Graeco-Bactrian, Indian, ^luhammadan, and 

 Chinese including even a Russian five Kopeck piece of the year 1758. 

 One class, however, is of particular interest. These are copper coins 

 inscribed on one side in Chinese, and on the other in an Indian language, 

 the latter being written in the so-called Kharosthi script which was in 

 use in the north-western corner of India during tl»e last (centuries 

 before and the first after Christ. The Chinese legend gives the value 

 and weight of the money only, while the Indian legend contains the 

 name of the king who issued the coin. Dr. Hoernle distinguishes 

 three, or perhaps five, of those kings, who all had a name beginning 

 Avith Gugra, a word of very uncertain meaning. He assigns them to 

 the period of 73-200 A.D. They were Uighur or Turk! kings of 

 Khotan, who reigned after the northern part of this kingdom had 

 severed itself from its former connection with India, and had submitted 

 to the Chinese empire. It is, as Dr. Hoernle says, owing to this fact 

 that the Uighur coinage of Khotan was assimilated to the Chinese 

 standard, and that its obverse legend, which had previously been Greek, 

 was replaced by a Chinese inscription, while the reverse legend still 

 continued to be expressed in the official Indian language and ludian- 

 Khnrosthi characters. 



The block-prints are in a variety of unknown characters, which 

 still wait for their decipherer. So much, however, is certain, that, in 

 Dr. Hoernle's own words, they contain " interminable repetitions of the 

 Rame text, which seems clearly to indicate that in these books we are 



