1863. ] Note on the Taxila Inscription. 153 
letters from “ Samvat’” to “20” do not exist in the original. The 
word Masa is doubtful, as the m has a mark at the bottom which is 
equivalent to an o or a w, and not an d, which is generally indicated by 
a horizontal or oblique line on the top and never by a stroke at foot, 
and it is impossible, therefore to read the first syllable as mda without 
assuming an error either in the original or the facsimile. For apilesa 
we have a word which cannot by any possibility have an Z in it, and 
- for ekavisatihi I can find no equivalent syllables, regard being had 
to the known powers of the Arian alphabet. 
In the Wardak record I followed Mr. H. C. Bayley in reading the 
letter* after the era atha chitriyasa vrehi. General Cunningham, in 
his correspondence with Mr. B. published in the last volume of the 
Journal (p. 303), found in those letters the words artamistyasa divasa 
vrehi which, in the paper under notice, he has changed to artamisiya- 
sa hi, dropping altogether the wre before hi and the divasa of his cor- 
respondence for which, however there was no equivalent whatever in 
the original. 
I do not presume to deny the possibility of Greek months being 
named in a Bactrian inscription, for in India it is a common practice 
in the present day to use the months of one language in the writing 
of another, such as the English months in Bengali records both official 
and private, and such might have been the case in the days of the 
Bactrians in India, but finding that out of the five dated Bactrian in- 
scriptions which have been hitherto discovered, three unquestionably 
have Hindu months, and the other two are only doubtful, Iam dis- 
posed to think that it is unwarrantable to assume from a few disjoint- 
ed syllables a Greek word in an Indian document, when an Indian 
term may be as easily supplied. Assuming the language of the record 
to be purely Sanskritic as I shall presently shew it to be, the missing 
syllable between the p and the m may be more reasonably supposed 
to have been an neha than an 7 and in that case the word would be 
panchamasa or the fifth month and not Panemos. | 
The General has noticed the Greek word Xanthicos in an inscription 
discovered by Captain Robinson of the Engineers, but as it has not yet 
been published, I cannot venture to say anything in regard to it. 
In the second line I take the word efasa to be the Pali form of 
etasya “of his” or “ thereof,’ and Patropati to be a corruption of 
* Ante, Vol. XXX. p. 346, 
