1865.] Notes on the Eran Insertions. 4 3 



Commenting on the Babu's decipherment of an inscription, I said : 

 " The third line shows an upmdhmdniya before a xj. In the teeth of 

 all grammar, this, as lately edited, had been turned into a repha."* 

 To this the Babu rejoins : " The upadlimdniya is a printer's blunder." 

 The Sanskrit scholar cannot fail to discern that there is, in this reply, 

 a blunder incomparably worse than a printer's. 



Again, I objected to the Babu's ?tt<TTftrJ^RTT. The reply is : " My 

 mdtdpitustathd is quite as correct as the suggested mdtdpitrostathd ; 

 the one being an itaretarasamdsa, and the other a samdhdra." 



In passing, mdtdpitustathd would involve, not, as is here implied, 

 an itaretarayoga compound, but a samdhdra. A compound of the 

 samdhdra description must be a neuter singular ; and that " mother" 

 and " father" can be thus combined, the veriest tyro in Sanskrit 

 should know to be impossible. 



These specimens of the Babu's want of accuracy and scholarship 

 might be greatly extended. But I shall have said as much as I care 

 to say, after mentioning that he has credited Mr. Prinsep,f instead of 

 myself, with extracting a full date from the inscription of Budha- 

 gupta. This is a trifle ; but it is characteristic. 



I had written thus far in April last, but laid my letter aside, with 

 the intention of withholding it. Owing, however, to Babu Kajendra- 

 lal Mitra's paper on Bhoja, in the second number of this year's Jour- 

 nal, I have resolved to forbear no longer. It would make a long list, 

 if I were to resume the facts of my own finding out which the Babu 

 there appropriates as though he himself had first brought them to 

 light. Where, too, he assails me, in connexion with the name of 

 Colebrooke,| he knows full well that I was not professing to correct 

 that great scholar as to the meaning of the word data. When re- 

 translating a passage translated by another, it is no just conclusion 

 that I regard as wrong, whatever I do not think fit to copy from his 

 renderings. It was a matter of misreading and metre, in the instance 

 in question, where I showed that Colebrooke had slipped.§ For the 



* Journal As. Soc. Seng., 1862, p. 128. 

 f Journal As. Soc. Beng., 1862, p. 396. 

 J Journal As. Soc. Beng , 1863, pp. 106 & 107. 



§ Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. VII., pp. 31 and 45 ; 

 and Journal As. Soc. Beng., 1861, p. 210. 



