1837.] of Coins deciphered. 379 



presume they have been circulated to the various Oriental Societies in 

 hopes of getting the legends deciphered. Encouraged and aided by 

 this accession of materials, I proceeded, according to the plan that 

 succeeded so well with the Bactro-Pehlevi inscriptions, to separate and 

 analyse the conformable portion or the titles common to all the coins, 

 and afterwards to classify the unconformable portion, which of course 

 would include the proper names. 



In this manner I was soon fortunate enough to discover a key to the 

 whole in the value of one or two anomalous looking letters which had 

 hitherto deceived me by their resemblance to members of other ancient 

 Sanskrit alphabets. I must acknowledge some assistance from Mr. 

 Wathen's Sindhi grammar, where having found the absence of vowel 

 marks in the modern alphabet of the country, I was not unprepared to find 

 the same omission in the more ancient one. Another preparatory step 

 was derived from the Tregear legends of last month's plate, ending in 

 Mitasa, whichlventuredto construe as the corrupted or Po/t' mode of ex- 

 pressing the Sanskrit possessive case Mitrasya. A similar $j was perceiv- 

 ed following ZJ5 or putra, which left little doubt that the word was 

 V^W, for "q^^j " of the son," which, by the idiom of the language, 

 would be the final word of the sentence, and would require all the pre- 

 ceding members of it to be in the genitive case. 



The letter •p (or^) occurred in the body of one or two of the legends 

 in its simple state, whereas in the initial word, which could not but be 

 raja, it was prolonged below, shewing that another letter was sub- 

 joined, while sometimes the visarga followed it. — This could be no- 

 wise explained but by supposing it the possessive case of Jjmj, or K\1S: 

 rdjneh, the double letter being not at that early date replaced by a 

 compound symbol. 



The same observation will apply to all the other double letters, mn, 

 tr, dr, sv, shv, which are in this alphabet made by the subjunction of 

 the second letter without diminution. Hence the peculiar elongation 

 of many of the letters, which was at first thought characteristic of the 

 whole alphabet, but it turns out to belong only to the letter r, which 

 is thus distinguished from the n, i, and h. 



The second word of the title I read W3?T*r, for "grf^m^T Kritrimasya, 

 genitive of Kritrima ; which is translated in Wilson's dictionary 

 "made, factitious, an adopted son (for Kritrima putra)." — The latter 

 sense was inadmissible, because it so happened that the name of the 

 actual father was in every case inserted, and the same title was also ap- 

 plied to him. The only manner, therefore, in which the term could 

 be rendered was by " elected" — " adopted" — by the people, or by the 



