1895.] T. D. La Touch e—^*^ Ancient Map of Bhakar. 69 



tions of Persia, Assyria and Babylonia, including his famous copy of 

 Behistun inscription made in 1847, and published two years latter, 

 which appeared in the Journals of the Geographical and Royal 

 Asiatic Societies have given him an imperishable name. As 

 Professor Max Mliller well remarks, if we followed the process by 

 which Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen and Rawlinson arrived at the 

 decipherment of the cuneiform tablets, we should see that " the dis- 

 covery of the alphabet, the language, the grammar, and the meaning 

 of the inscriptions of the AchcBmenian dynasty deserves to be classed 

 with the discoveries of a Kepler, a Newton, or a Faraday." 



The Philological Secretary exhibited an ancient map of Bhakar 

 on the Indus, and read the following letter from Mr. T. D. La Touche, 

 of the Geological Survey, from whom it had been received. 



*' I am sending you by parcel post a tracing of an ancient plan of 

 the island of Bhakar, on the Indus, with portions of the towns of Rohri 

 and Sukkur, which may be of interest to some of the members of the 

 Society. 



I have not been able to learn much of the history of the plan, 

 but what follows was told me by the Mukhtiarkar of Rohri, through 

 whom the plan was obtained from the owner by Mr. Pratt, Deputy 

 Collector of Rohri, who lent it to me for copying. 



The owner is a Sayyad, Ya'qub 'Ali by name, whose ancestor was, at 

 the time of Akbar's annexation of Sind (1591-92), sub-governor of 

 Rohri, and was made by him governor of the island of Bhakar. The 

 plan was made by Akbar's order, by an artist whose name is unknown, 

 in duplicate, one copy being sent to the Emperor at Delhi, and the 

 other handed down in the governor's family. It would be interesting 

 to learn whether the other copy, sent to Delhi, is still in existence 

 or not. 



The plan is, I imagine, a fairly faithful representation of the aspect 

 of Bhakar as it was before the buildings were demolished. The most 

 interesting point about the whole plan is, however, the building shown 

 in the middle of the river, standing on a rock below the island of Sudh- 

 bela. This building has entirely disappeared now ; indeed, it is evident 

 that at the time the plan was made, the rock on which it stood was 



