G4 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 



period, in material wealth, as it was in intellectual development, claims 

 that it has upheld with singular tenacity, under many adverse influ- 

 ences, through more than twenty centuries, until European Calcutta, 

 at last, superseded the Imperialism of Moghul Delhi. 



I have a more onerous duty to perform in satisfying my readers in 

 regard to the date internal evidence would assign to these issues. I 

 have previously confessed a difficulty, and admitted that the data for 

 testing the age of this coinage by the style of the letters on its surface 

 were somewhat uncertain, and in a veiy elaborate examination of every 

 single literal symbol employed on the varying representatives of the class, 

 I came to the conclusion that if certain more archaic forms of letters 

 might take the whole series up in point of time, modifications, approach- 

 ing to modernisations, might equally reduce individual instances to a 

 comparatively late date.* I was prepared to disavow any adhesion to 

 the old theory that the fixed lapidary type of Asoka's inscriptions was 

 to constitute the one test of all local time and progress, and the sole 

 referee of all gradations in Palaeography, though I was not in a condition 

 to cite what I now advance with more confidence — both the exception- 

 al and stiff form of a lapidary alphabet, per se, as opposed to the Avrit- 

 ing of everyday life, which last the numismatic letters would more 

 readily follow ; but I subordinated the fact that Asoka's alphabet was 

 designed for all India, and although it condescended to admit modified 

 dialectic changes, all the inscriptions are supposed to have emanated 

 from one official copy, which, however perfect at Palibothra or impos- 

 ing at Ganjam, may well have been behind the age in that focus of 

 learning to the eastward of the Saraswati, where not only must Indian- 

 Pali have been brought to unusual caligraphic perfection, but from its 

 contact and association with the Semitic alphabet on the same ground 

 and in the same public documents, may be supposed to have achieved 

 suggestive progress of its own, and to have risen far above the limita- 

 tions of the writing of ordinary uninstructed communities in other 

 parts of India ; so that, whatever doubts or hesitation I may have felt 

 in the once discouraged notion that any approach to perfection existed 

 in India prior to Alexander's advent, I have been forced into, and now 

 willingly acknowledge, diametrically opposite convictions, and concur 

 in the surprise expressed by the Greeks themselves that the Indians 

 were already so far and so independently advanced in civilisation. 

 * Prinsep's " Essays," i. p. 207. 



