1836.] Facsimiles of various Ancient Inscriptions. 341 



consonants in the same manner ; and, in short, there can be little 

 doubt that both are of one family, and that the monuments bearing 

 these characters may boast of as high an antiquity as has been allowed 

 to the coins, (PL XLIX. vol. iv. page 684,) of the Saurashtra group. 

 Some of these, it will be remembered, have a trilingual symbol, in com- 

 mon with the oldest form of coins dug up near Seharanpur ,• and the 

 head on their obverse is supposed to be imitated from the Greek coins 

 of Kodos, probably a Parthian successor of some of the petty Greek 

 chieftains on the Indus. Other coins have a trident on the reverse. 



In the first and third lines there appear to be numerals, which may 

 be read i^o and *> *>•<>, 1119 and 1100: the figure one being rather 

 like the Bengali than the Nagari form. These however can hardly 

 refer in any known era to the period assigned to the coins. 



Moulmein Inscription. 

 No. II. of the same plate, is the inscription in the Barma character 

 and Talain language found in the Damatha Cavern near Moulmein by 

 Captain W. Foley, and mentioned in his paper, (page 274 of the 

 preceding No.) 1 have appended a translation by Ratna Paula in a 

 postscript to the same paper, but nothing can be made of such an 

 enigmatical jumble of figures. 



Chunar Inscription. 



No. I. of Plate IX. is taken from a pencil sketch of a stone slab 

 in the Fort of Chunar near Benares, by Lieut. A. Cunningham, 

 Engineers . 



This young officer, who during his short residence at Benares has 

 brought so many facts and antiquities to light as to make me blush for 

 my own inactive residence there, had some time previously sent me a 

 Nagari transcript of the same inscription, in its present mutilated 

 condition, written out by a Benares pandit, who also supplied the 

 missing part of the text from a copy taken, he asserted, some years 

 ago, before the surface of the stone had peeled away. An imperfect 

 copy of the same, as it formerly existed, was also found among the Fort 

 Adjutant's records at Chunar. On comparing the three, however, 

 many discrepancies were perceived, and the position of the erasures 

 was not marked in the pandit's transcript. I therefore again wrote 

 to Lieut. Cunningham, who proceeded to the fort and took the copy 

 himself from the stone, whence the present lithograph is made. 



Having such abundant materials for making out what appeared a 

 most simple inscription, I entrusted the whole to a young pandit, late 

 of the English class in the Sanscrit College, to put together and trans- 

 late. He made several alterations in the Benares pandit's readings, 



