81 Rajendralala Mitra— Oft a Coin of Kunanda from Kamdl. [No. 1, 



This argument, however, is not conclusive, as Mr. Carleton's coin is 

 as well preserved as any I have seen of so old a date as three hundred and 

 twenty-five to three hundred and forty years before Christ, every letter being 

 perfectly distinct and as sharp as when first issued from the mint, and in it 

 the lower limb of the Bactrian k of the reverse is perfectly straight and 

 blunt, showing not the smallest trace of a spur or curl to the right. And 

 even with the curl, the indication is not so decisive as could be wished, for 

 a very slight bend in the foot often occurs in this class of writing without 

 meaning any consonantal or vowel affix. It is the result of hasty writing, 

 in which the pen is not taken off the paper before it has already produced 

 a tail. It was this tail which changed the original Indian -J- successively 

 into 4- H" q" ^t- In 'the Ariano-Pali character several instances may be 

 easily cited in ancient inscriptions, where the lower limb, although ordinarily 

 straight, has sometimes been curled or spurred. Thus the ch, ordinarily 

 written y, is sometimes provided with a spur, thus ^.* The spur is again 

 used for u, as in l__, which Professor Dowson takes for mu, and also for 

 y, as in \, which the same gentleman takes for sya.f Adverting to this 

 curl in the Bahawalpur inscription, he further says : " It proves, however, 

 that the curl of the foot of a consonant indicates that consonant to be 

 doubled, and not to be always, as hitherto supposed, a consonant combined 

 with r. From the frequent combination of r with other consonants in 

 Sanskrit, this twist of the bottom of a letter represents the letter more 

 frequently than any other ; but as we here find the s curled round to 

 represent the sy of the Sanskrit genitive, there can be no doubt it represents 

 the doubled consonant — that doubled consonant being here the equivalent 

 of sy. In most other instances, as in Achayya for Acharya, it is the equival- 

 ent of r combined with another consonant. This substitution of doubled for 

 compound consonants brings the language into much closer relation with 

 the Pali^." It should be remarked, however, that this inference, ingenious 

 as it is, is redundant ; for the language of the inscription being the old Pali of 

 the Kapurdigiri monument, the genitive should require no y after s, and the 

 curl may pass for an ornament or a variant form as in the case of ch noticed 

 by him, and referred to above. 



Epigraphic evidence being thus far unsatisfactory and inconclusive, 

 though from the more frequent occurrence of the spur to the right for r in 

 the Bactrian Mr. Thomas's reading is the most consistent, it is necessary to 

 turn our attention next to the etymology of the word, not with any great 

 hope of a decisive result, for the ductility and plasticity of the Sanskrit lan- 

 guage are quite against such an expectation, but only to see on which side 



* Journal, E. As. Soc, XX., plate IV. 



f Loc. cit. 



% Ibid., N. S., IV., p. 501. 



