1835.] found in the ruins at Harsha, in Shekavafi. 367 



II. — Restitution and Translation of the Inscription found in the Ruins 



of the Mountain-Temple ofShekdvatl. By W. H. Mill, D. D. Piin- 



cipal of Bishop's College, Vice-President, fyc. 8(C. 



[Read before the Asiatic Society, August 5, 1835.] 



The inscription mentioned in the preceding 1 article, is not unworthy 

 of the labour which Dr. G. C. Rankin and Serjeant Dean have 

 severally bestowed on it. Though abounding, like other monuments 

 of the same kind, with much that is little calculated to interest west- 

 ern readers, it is not destitute of philological and historical use, 

 in illustrating the political and literary state of India at the very 

 remarkable period to which it belongs. Its date precedes, by a few 

 years only, the first great invasion of the Mahoraedans : who, ever since 

 that period, the close of the tenth century of our era, have so power- 

 fully influenced the civil and social state of the country. The charac- 

 ter in which this inscription is executed, joined with the extreme 

 precision of its date, gives it a value beyond that of its own intrinsic 

 information : furnishing, as it does, a definite standard, from which 

 the age of other monuments of similar or more remotely resembling 

 characters may be inferred with tolerable accuracy. 



The character, though illegible at present to the pandits even of 

 northern India, presents no difficulty after the deciphering of the 

 more ancient inscriptions, whose characters resemble those of the 

 second on the pillar of Allahabad. This stone exhibits the Devanagari 

 in its state of transition, from the form visible in that and other yet 

 older monuments, to the writing which now universally bears that 

 name, and which may be traced without sensible variation in inscrip- 

 tions as old as the 12th century. From the facsimile of Serjeant 

 Dean, I easily transcribed all the legible letters of the inscription into 

 the last-mentioned character : and the circumstance of its being in 

 verse of various measures, (though written according to Indian usage, 

 in unbroken lines like prose,) with the exception of a few prosaic 

 enumerations near the end, helped greatly to the restitution of the 

 reading, where the stone was broken or partially defaced*. 



* Of the 49 verses or stanzas of which thepoetical part of this inscription consists, 

 23 are in the measure the most nearly approaching to the freedom of prose, 

 the Iambic Tetrameter of the Ramayana and Mahabharata : and one is in the 

 ancient description of metre called A'ryd, in which, as in the Anapaestic measure! 

 of the Greeks, the aggregate quantity of feet is preserved, without regard to 

 the number of syllables. The remaining 25 (which the great length of some of 

 the metres causes to be the most considerable portion of the whole inscription,) 

 are in various descriptions of lyrical measure, seven in number, in each of which 

 the number and the quantity of syllables is regulated with the same rigour 



