1837.] of the Inscription on the Bhitdri Ldt. 3 



cisely such mistakes as a Hindu superficially acquainted with that 

 language might most easily commit, if uninspected, in a work like 

 this : the former arising from an ignorant confusion of two words of 

 similar sound, but wholly different etymology as well as meaning, — 

 the latter from total inattention to the rules of metrical harmony. 

 Now the existence of two such glaring errors of the sculptor, uncor- 

 rected, renders it highly probable that we should impute to him 

 a large proportion, if not the whole, of the seven following equally 

 manifest errors, (which might in their own nature, the first especially, 

 be as easily committed by the European tracer of a facsimile.) 



1 . We have in line 8, at the close of the first metrical stanza, one 

 «T instead of two in the words «r*Trj nanartta required to close the 

 verse in the Mdnini measure 



V U V U \t \> ~~— —— *■— x* — — — - v* — — * 



with no room whatever in the facsimile for the missing letter. 



2. We have in the beginning of line 10, the syllables f%3" with not 

 the least space between them — though it is absolutely certain that a if 

 ought to be there, no other syllable making a word with the syllables 

 5rf^lf% preceding, viz. the word pranihiia from the close of the 9th 

 line. 



3. Again in line 10, we have in the facsimile "^ where the measure 

 cannot possibly admit more than the latter of these two syllables, 

 viz. the long ^ in ^^^|T. 



4. We have in line 12, the syllables ¥jf^fg^f^;f^ without the least 

 interval in the facsimile between the first and second of them, — 

 though the first is the penultimate of a connected and well defined 

 stanza, and the four following are as evidently the beginning of 

 another : the verse thus requiring, as does the sense independently of 

 the verse, the syllable ^ to close the former stanza with the word 

 suddham. 



5. We have in line 13, the syllables "sp f«T in close juxtaposi- 

 tion, not only contrary to the rules of sandhi, which in verse 

 are carefully observed, but the former appearing from the preced- 

 ing syllables to be the penultimate of a Mdnini line, while the latter 

 appears equally from the following ones to be the third syllable 

 of the next : so that there are absolutely required three syllables for 

 which there is no space whatever in the facsimile ; viz. either snfag; 

 which I have supplied, or something equivalent, to close one line of 

 the stanza and begin the next. 



6. There is no adequate space for the seven syllables required to 

 be supplied at the beginning of the 14th line on the pillar to com- 

 b 2 



