1837.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 319 



Lieut. Kittoe had met with obstructions in his inquiries from a mistrust of the 

 resident brahmans, which he found to originate in their temples having been robbed 

 some years ago of slabs containing inscriptions, by some officer ; and he strongly 

 urged the justice of restoring any such that might have come into the Society's 

 possession. One he suspected, from its dimensions, was the identical one publish- 

 ed in the Journal for February. 



The Secretary stated that on examination he found this to be the case, as a second 

 inscription of precisely the same character, now under publication, contained the name 

 of the Raja of Orissa, who founded Bhubaneswar temple. The Meeting resolved una- 

 nimously, that the slabs should be restored, and that Lieutenant Kittoe had their 

 warmest thanks for the suggestion. 



Read a letter from Lieutenant Sale, Engineers, dated Allahabad, in 



April, forwarding a facsimile taken on cloth and paper of an inscription 



at Kalinjer, situated at the entrance of a temple of Mnhadeoa. 



The greater part of this inscription being obliterated, it will be impossible to make 

 any profitable use of the facsimile, but it has been so far useful as to enable us to 

 ascertain that another large slab in the Museum in the same peculiar character, 

 must be the one stated to have been brought from the same fort and presented by 

 General Stewart. 



" The inscription," Lieutenant Sale writes, " is cut on black marble ; portions 

 of it are effaced by former clumsy attempts to take copies, which have destroyed the 

 letters. The date appears to be only about 700 years back, and the text contains 

 the name of a certain raja by name Parma'lik. The resident brahmans give a 

 curious tradition of the origin of the palace and fortifications of Kalinjer, attributing 

 them to the virtues of a mineral spring which cured a raja \a the Satya yuga from a 

 loathsome cutaneous disorder." 



The Secretary exhibited Mr. Vincent Tregear's splendid collection 



of the Gupta gold coins, which had been intrusted to him for the purpose 



by the proprietor, whose zeal in this line of research had been attended 



with remarkable success. 



The box contained 40 gold coins of the series — principally of Chandra, Samudra, 

 Kumara, Skanda and Mahendra Guptas : also the new Vicramdditya type, and 

 the celebrated Ardokro coin. 



Lieutenant Kittoe had just added a new name to the same list from a coin in the 

 possession of au officer at Pooree. It bears the title Baladitya, and a name not yet 

 well deciphended, Nara, perhaps intended for Narayana Gupta. 



Physical. 



The following observations on the declination and inclination of the 

 magnetic needle made at Diamond Harbour, were obligingly communicated 

 to the Society by the chief hydrographer of the French corvette La Bo- 

 nite, Captain Vaillant, during her sojourn here. 



The instruments used were of extreme delicacy, with a contrivance for changing the 

 agate of suspension which is found to be worn away by the platina point on which 

 it revolves. The poles of the magnets are changed at every observation so as to 

 remove all index error. 



It will be seen that gradual change has taken place since the observations of M. 

 Blossville and Colonel Hodgson, published in the As. Res. Vol. XVIII. On 

 referring also to experiments made at Benares some years ago, the same fact is con- 

 firmed. The following table embraces an abstract of the whole of the observations. 

 Declination, or Magnetic variation. 



O I 



1813, Mean of Maj. Hodgson's obs. in N. West. Provinces o 41 East. 



1821, March, observations at Benares, by J. Prinsep, 5i do 



1822, April, ditto ditto 1 j do! 



1825, March, ditto, ditto, 1 27 do.' 



1827, November, at Calcutta, by Captain Fabre, 2 33 54 do. 



by Surveyor General 2 28 36 do! 



1828, February, ditto, by ditto, 2 41 16 do. 



1829, June, ditto, by ditto, 2 24 10 do! 



1837, 14th April, at Diamond Harbour, La Bonite, 4 needles, .. 3 37 East.' 



2 t 2 



