1834.] Pillar at Allahabad. 107 



ropean at all in its composition, unless an incongruous effect were the 

 desideratum of architectural beauty*. 



My brother of the 64th regiment, was kind enough (for it was a 

 work of labor) to make a copy of so much of the various characters as is 

 situated on the present upper surface of the stone (or gadd as it 

 is named by the natives). Lieut. Burt having to rejoin his corps 

 before the stone could be removed, I have employed a moonshee 

 in effecting a copy of the part which remained under ground, for the 

 stone was buried about a foot in the soil, partly from the effect of its 

 weight, and partly from the pathway having been added to from 

 time to time with road material. I have examined each of the copies 

 (with the stone ?), and corrected the shapes of those letters which appeared 

 to require it both in the first copy and in its transcript. 



The Persian inscription is so far peculiar, that in reading it upon the 

 stone, the lower, or second line, is to be read first, so as to preserve 

 the gradation of the nine Emperors of Delhi mentioned in it, Timu'r 

 being the first, and Jehangir the last, in whose time it would seem to 

 have been engraved. The year mentioned is 1014 (see compartment 2 

 from the left, vol. VII. page 180, Asiatic Researches), which appears on 

 reference to Mr. Smith's Chronological Table, at page 447 of the same 

 volume, to have been the year in which Jehangir was crowned at Agra. 



I do not send an exact copy of the ornament surrounding the Persian 

 inscription, as that shewn in the volume referred to is so much more 

 neatly done than any I could obtain that I beg to refer you to it : only 

 one or two of the Persian letters differ from the copy now sent; they 

 are in alto relievo, beautifully cut, and still appear as if newly executed 

 upon the pillar. 



The Persian letters being in alto relievo upon the central band of the 

 stone, induced me to think that they must have been cut or left upon it on 

 its first removal from the quarry, or in A. H. 1014 (A. D. 1605), as above 

 noticed ; but subsequent inspections induced me to think differently, 

 for although the letters themselves are in alto relievo, or projecting far 

 beyond the belt or zone upon which they rest, yet the plane of that 

 belt or zone is excavated so deeply in the periphery of the stone 

 that its depth is exactly equal to the height of the letters themselves ' 

 which shews without contradiction that the Persian inscription could 

 have been engraved subsequently to the writing in the Sanscrit charac- 

 ter, every letter of which is cut into the stone, and consequently has no 

 projection whatever, excepting what the surface of the periphery pre- 



* Major Irvine, Engineers, C. B. states that in 1826, he sent in an estimate to 

 put it up for about 1800 rupees, but the Governor General, Lord Amherst, ob- 

 jected to the expence on the grounds of its inutility I 

 o 2 



