76 Hara Prasad f astri — Exhibition of a manuscript. [April, 



(2) That in accordance with Rule 38 of the Society's Eules, the 

 names of the following gentlemen had been posted up as defaulting 

 members since the Monthly General Meeting held in January last, and 

 will be removed from the Member List and the fact published in the 

 Proceedings. 



Munshi Aziz-ud-din Ahmad, 

 Raja Baikunta Nath De Bahadur, 

 Maul vie Khuda Baksh Khan Bahadur, 

 Rai Rajkumar Sarvadhikari Bahadur, 

 Babu Narendra Nath Sen, 

 X Raja Bhupendra Singh Bahadur. 



U The President also announced that the Council had resolved that a 

 Monthly General Meeting of the Society be held in Simla on the first 

 Wednesday in September next (on which day no meeting is held in 

 Calcutta) for the convenience of members in Northern India and that 

 the meeting be devoted to the reading of papers, the general business of 

 the Society being conducted as usual in Calcutta. 



Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasad pastri exhibited a manuscript 

 of Kulalikamnaya — a Tantric work in Gupta character of the seventh 

 century and made the following remarks on it. 



In exhibiting this manuscript he offered the following observa- 

 tions : — 



(1) It has been obtained from Nepal. 



(2) There are 77 leaves in the MS. in Gupta and one in Nevari 

 character. Seventy-two of the leaves are in tolerably good preservation, 

 five being dilapidated. Leaves 34, 40 to 49, 69, 72 to 84, 86 to 89, 94, 

 96, 97, 100 to 104, 106 to 109, 111 to 165, 167 to 187, 189 to 259 are' 

 missing. The highest number marked 260. The leaves have holes for 

 the string not in the middle but slightly to the right as in the Bower 

 MSS. 



(3) The character is Gupta. I have carefully compared the letters 

 with charts of Gupta Alphabet and I believe that in pronouncing it to 

 belong to the seventh century I have erred rather in making it more 

 modern than it really is. The shape of letters agree more with those of 

 Horiuzi Palm-leaves than with any other and the age of the Horiuzi 

 Palm-leaves has been set down at 550 A.D. As they are said to be in 

 Japan since the year 609 A.D. The most useful criterion in determining 

 the age of an old manuscript, is to see how many letters have open tops. 

 The proportion of open tops in the present MSS. appears to be much 

 larger than in the ninth century Gupta Palm-leaves photographed in 

 Professor Bendall's Cambridge Catalogue. 



