JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



JYo. 30.— June, 1834. 



I. — Restoration of the Inscription, No. 2, on the Allahabad Column. By 

 the Rev. W. H. Mill, D. D. Principal of Bishop's College, Vice- 

 President of the Asiatic Society, %c. 



[Read at the Meetiag of the 28th ultimo.] 

 The March number of the Journal of the Asiatic Society contained 

 the result of the Pandit Madhu Rao's collation of the Allahabad In- 

 scription, No. 2, with others in a similar character— together with 

 Captain Troyer's English version and valuable remarks. The learned 

 Pandit's transcript exhibits such letters only of the pillar in Devanaga- 

 ri as were capable of tolerably certain identification with those found 

 on monuments already deciphered, leaving frequent and often consider- 

 able intervals for the remaining letters : and the version, as was indeed 

 unavoidable from such a text, presented still wider intervals. The 

 translation of many of the clauses thus insulated was necessarily of a 

 conjectural kind : and except in the valuable discovery of lines 25 and 

 26, where the Prince's genealogy occurred, contained nothing like a 

 connected sentence. 



A cursory inspection of the transcript and the version convinced me 

 that, where so much was done, more might be certainly attained. To 

 those acquainted with the art of deciphering unknown arbitrary cha- 

 racters in any known language, it is needless to remark that the clear 

 possession of a key to two or three common letters, necessarily draws 

 after it the discovery of all the rest : and that where the further progress of 

 discovery is really barred, it is an infallible proof of some error in the 

 previous assumption. No such error was suspected here, (except in some 

 comparatively inconsiderable instances, which may be seen by any one 

 that will take the trouble of comparing the two transcripts together ;) 



L L 



