1863. | Remarks on the Taxila Inscription. 421 
Remarks on the Taxila Inscription—By Professor J. Dowson, 
Sandhurst College. 
[The following is a letter addressed to H. Thomas, Esq., the Society’s Honorary 
Agent in London, and by him communicated to the Society. | 
Sandhurst, 15th September, 1863. 
My pear S1r,—I am much indebted to you for so promptly send- 
ing to me General Cunningham’s paper on the Taxila Inscription, and 
I very willingly adopt your suggestion of sending the few remarks I 
have to make upon it for insertion in the Journal of the Asiatic So- 
ciety of Bengal. The discussion upon it will thus be greatly facilitat- 
ed and more speedily brought to a conclusion. 
The call which you sent to India, before my translation was pub- 
lished, for a separate independent version of this important record, 
was at once responded to by General Cunningham. Both translations 
are now before the world, and although there are many points of 
difference between them, there is quite sufficient of agreement, to satis- 
fy even the most sceptical, that we are working upon a sure foundation. 
I perceive that General Cunningham has discovered the two slightly 
varying forms of the prefixed r, he has also made out the diverging 
form of the letter y as it appears in the Wardak Urn Inscription, with 
a rounded instead of the usual pointed head. We have thus simul- 
taneously arrived at these decipherments, and I am happy to have my 
name associated with his as their godfather. Other identifications 
which I proposed will I hope recommend themselves to his approval, 
such as the ft, the compounds han, mam, yan, s’wa, &c. 
Your announcement of my discovery of the true values of the Bactrian 
numerals has at once been adopted, and General Cunningham has 
gone through the various Bactrian dates, with results entirely in ac- . 
cordance with my own. In one instance, that of the Ohind Inscrip- 
tion, he has amended the old reading of the date, by changing the 
unintelligible word vaomite into attamitt. I proposed this emendation, 
but having only the lithograph before me, I did not venture upon 
making it. He has doubtless consulted the original document or in- 
dependent copies. We thus get another confirmation of the value of 
the two crosses forming the number 8. 
I have gone most attentively through General Cunningham’s trans- 
literation, and after duly considering all the points of difference between 
