1900.] Hara Prasad (^aatr'i—A supplement to the Amarahosa. 79 



2. On a new method of treating the properties of the circle and 

 analogous matters, — By Promotho Nath Duxr, M.A., B.L. Communicated 

 by the Natural History Secretary. ^ , 



3. Note on four Mammals from the neighbourhood of Darjeeling. — By 

 W. P. MXssoN. Communicated by the Natural History Secretary. 



The papers will be published in the Journal, Parfc 11. 



4. On a Supplement of the Celebrated Lexicon Amarahosa by a 

 Buddhist author in very ancient Bengali character. — By Mahamahopadhyaya 

 Hara Prasad flSTRi, M.A. 



Of this supplement which seems to have run through about one 

 hundred leaves we have got only the first, the eighty-fourth the eighty- 

 fifth with distinct page numbers and another with the page number 

 broken off. But all the leaves are precious the first leaf specially. 



The Amarakosa is very well-known. It was composed by Amara- 

 simha one of the nine gems of the Court of the legendary Vikramaditya 

 who seems to have flourished by the middle of the Sixth Century A.D. 

 The Author was a Brahmana and a worshipper of ^iva. But he 

 subsequently became a Buddhist and is said to have built the great 

 Temple at Bodh Gaya. His invocation at the beginning of his Kosa 

 though thoroughly Buddhistic in tone does not name any deity and so it 

 has been variously interpreted by commentators of different persuasions. 



But the Author of the Supplement had no reason to keep the name 

 of his deity in the back ground. He boldly makes his obeisance to 

 the Munindra and to such Hindu deities as have their place in the 

 Buddhist Pantheon. In the second verse he says his attempt is confined 

 to such names as were not used by people when Amara wrote but 

 which have come into use since his time. He retains the arrangement 

 and the technicalities of Amara and makes it in every sense a supple- 

 ment. 



The character (Bengali) is much more archaic than that of the 

 palm-leaves photographed in Professor Bendal's Cambridge Catalogue. 

 In fact it is intermediate between Gupta and old Bengali. If my memory 

 serves me right I saw something like it in Dharmaditya's Copper-plate 

 Grant obtained from Barisal. There is one feature in these leaves which 

 is absolutely unique ; I mean the use of something like commas and semi- 

 colons. Each word is separated from its neighbour by a comma or rather 

 a slanting stroke resembling the Bengali hasanta mark. Unlike the 

 European comma it has not the point and the curve but it does all the 

 work of a comma in separating various synonyms. Where one set of 

 synonyms end within a verse there are two slanting strokes doing the 

 duty of a semi-colon. The use of these signs makes the reading of the 

 work comparatively easy. 



