and Grants useful in Historical Research. 81 



fortunate pride of ancestry, most of these records of kingly grants recite 

 a long train of antecedent Rajas, which serve to confirm or to supply 

 vacuities in the more scanty written records. Of the value of these to 

 history we cannot adduce a better instance, than the confirmation of 

 the Bhupala dynasty of the Bijas of Gaur, as given by Abul Fazl in 

 the occurrence of the names of Devapa'la, Dhermapala, Rajapala, 

 &c, on the several monuments at Monghir, Buddal, Dindjpur, Amgdchi, 

 and Sdrndth near Benares, where also the date and the Buddha reli- 

 gion of the prince are manifested. It was supposed by Mr. (now Sir 

 Charles) Wilkins, that the two first inscriptions referred to the first 

 century of the Samvat era ; but, as shewn by Mr. Colebrooke, as well 

 as by actual date at Sdrndth, they rise no earlier than the tenth. In- 

 deed, the occurrence of inscriptions bearing unequivocal dates, anterior 

 to that period, is very rare. Col. Tod adduces one of the fifth cen- 

 tury (S. 597) discovered near Kota. Mr. Wathen has also recently 

 produced two of the 4th and 6th centuries, dug up in Gujerat, which 

 confirm, or rather correct, the early records of the Saurashtra dynasty. 

 The oldest, however, exist in Ceylon, where they have been brought 

 to light by Captain Forbes and the Honorable Mr. Tcjrnour : 

 some of these, of which translations are published by the latter 

 author in the Ceylon Almanac for 1834, are ascribed, on evi- 

 dence of facts mentioned in them, to the year A. D. 262 ; but they 

 bear no actual date. The period most prolific of inscriptions is 

 from the 9th to the 13th century; when an anxiety seems to have 

 prevailed among the priests to possess graven records of grants from 

 the reigning or from former sovereigns, in order probably to secure 

 their temples and estates from spoliation or resumption in those 

 turbulent times. One of Col. Tod's inscriptions, translated by Mr. 

 Colebrooke, in the Roy. As. Soc. Trans, vol. i. expressly declares 

 a rival grant to be futile, and derived from an unauthorized source. 

 The value of inscriptions, as elucidations of history, cannot better be 

 exemplified than by the circumstance of the Burmese inscription in 

 the Pali character found at Gayd, on the visit of the envoys from 

 Ava, in 1827, of which a translation was printed in the Journal As. 

 Soc. iii. 214. It records the frequent destructions and attempts to 

 repair the Buddhist temple there, and the successful completion of it 

 in the Sacaraj year 667, A. D. 1306*. Now Col. Tod's Rajput annals 

 of Mewar make particular mention of expeditions to recover Gaya 

 from the infidels, in 1200-50, which might not but for this record 

 have been capable of explanation. 



* Col. Burney reads the date, which is rather indistinct, 467, or a. d. 1106 ; 

 but the above evidence tends to confirm the original reading. 



