186 Remarks on the above by E. C. Bayley, Esq. [No. 2, 



ly did, and sufficient vitality to assert its supremacy and community 

 with the Hindu element, as the facts of subsequent history so far 

 as ascertainable would indicate. Albeit to this day many of the wild 

 tribes (e. g. the Ghukkurs) who people the country even south of 

 the Indus, can scarcely be considered as having ever fairly belonged 

 to the Hindu race. 



That a foreign element was strong in the trans- Jhelum districts at 

 the period of which I have spoken, may be guessed from the fami- 

 liar names of men and places, which are certainly for the most part 

 anything but Pali or Hindu. These are indications of the tendency 

 of the daily life of the races for whom the inscriptions were writ- 

 ten, and I think that it may be fairly from them assumed, that the 

 language of their common use must be, prima facie, expected to par- 

 take of a similar character. 



It is not therefore too much to say that in these regions at least 

 (and perhaps this is true also to some degree and at some time of other 

 parts of India) we should not expect the language of an inscription 

 of the period to which we refer to be either pure Pali or Sanscritized 

 Pali ; and a version which renders it as such is, I think, therefore 

 ipso facto open to doubt and suspicion. Of course under such circum- 

 stances more than ordinary jealousy and circumspection is necessary 

 in "stretching" the phonetic value of any letter, to suit an intelli- 

 gible reading. 



Having said so much on this point, I wish to notice another pre- 

 liminary objection to Eajendra Lai's version, which is the somewhat 

 high flown character of the language as given by him. It is opposed 

 to that which, as far as other inscriptions of the same period go to 

 show, was employed at that time and in similar inscriptions. True, as 

 Eajendra Lai has pointed out (in page 182) this argument is of lit- 

 tle value if the reading of the inscription is in itself unimpeach- 

 able, but where, as here, that is not the case, it is an argument which 

 goes some way to overthrow the probability that the version given 

 is the correct one. 



I am now bound to give the transliteration of the inscription, 

 which appears to me to be correct, and having done this I will attempt 

 to give a conjectural reading, open I am aware to very considerable 

 doubt, but which still seems to me preferable to that above offered. 



Before doing so I would observe that the phonetic value of but 



