1834.] on the Allahabad Column. 259 



of the accuracy with which Devanagaii letters are assigned to the 

 several characters*. In one only of the regal proper names, that of the 

 king's grandfather Ghatotkacha, does my reading differ from Captain 

 Troyer's : and it is observable that this is also the name of a son of 

 the Pandava hero Bhima Sena, brother of Yudhisthira and Arjuna in 

 the Mahabharata, and might perhaps have given rise to the popular 

 appellation of this pillar in Hindustan, " the Staff of Bhima Sen." 



The test arising fro.n definite and continuous meaning applies of 

 course only to those parts where the inscription is itself complete, and 

 clear of all considerable interruption, viz. all from the 14th to the 29th 

 lines inclusive, (for the 30th is separate from the rest, and appears 

 broken off like the earlier lines,) perhaps also the 2nd and 3rd, which, 

 though short, seem to me to be very nearly complete. But even in the 

 other lines, the words and the compounds are intelligible : and if we 

 except the 1st, and the end of the 6th, lines (the first containing but nine 

 insulated letters, and the last breaking off in the midst of a compound, 

 leaving the preceding words in that compound uncertain as to their 

 bearing) — the separate clauses may be pretty well traced, though their 

 import in the sentence is lost. In all these, lacunar of various lengths 

 occur in the pillar, which I have scrupulously filled up with precisely 

 the same number of letters as are designated by Lieutenant Burt for 

 the several intervals. It is not by any means intended to ascribe to 

 these addedf letters of my own, (except when the interval is very small, 

 as in line 24,) the same degree of accuracy which I should be disposed 

 to claim for all, with one or two exceptions only, of the transcribed 

 letters : for the most part they merely indicate the probable (and in 

 some cases of very marked meaning, as in line 28, the certain) equiva- 

 lents of the letters that formerly occupied the same spaces. Where 

 lacuna? occur at the end of a line, I had no such consideration to guide 

 me : here, as in lines 18 and 26, it was merely my object to close the 

 imperfect compound by as few letters as would serve the purpose of 

 expressing the evident meaning. In the earlier lines, the idea of 

 completing the sentence by such means was out of the question. 



* In one instance I was assisted to the meaning of an ill-defined letter resembling 

 a TJ in the accurate fac-simile, — by the partial specimen of the inscriptions on the 

 pillar given in the 7th Volume of the As. Res. (Plate xiv.) — which though very in- 

 ferior in accuracy to Lieutenant Burt's, yet having been taken at a time when the 

 pillar had not been so much defaced as at present, may be conceived to convey 

 some characters more perfectly. The character was there rJT distinctly, and as this 

 happily made sense of what was before unintelligible, its accuracy could not be 

 questioned. 



t These letters are distinguished in the transcript by a much smaller character. 



L L 2 



