258 



On Ancient Indian Weights. 



[No. 3, 



writing, over all the country of the Brahmarshis, it would be rash to 

 attempt to place a limit on the amount of ChaMsean or other western 

 sciences that may have accompanied these cursive letters, 19 which 

 either directly or indirectly, travelled eastward from the borders of 

 Mesopotamia to the banks of the Ganges. And clearly, if the gram- 

 marian Pdnini's age has been rightly determined by his special 

 modern commentator,^ Bactrian writing, or Tavcm&ni-lipi^ must 

 have been freely current at Taxila at and before B.C. 548, even as it 

 subsequently became the ruling alphabet in those parts, so as to 

 appear as the Inscription character under Asoka (b.c. 246) in the 

 Peshawar valley, and to hold its own as the official method of expres- 

 sion in concurrence with the local Pali as low down as Mathura up to 

 a much later period. Under these evidences of the spread of Aryan 

 civilisation in India, there will be little or no difficulty in admitting 

 that much of what has hitherto been esteemed as purely indigenous 

 knowledge, may, even thus early, have been improved and matured by 

 the waifs and strays of the discoveries of very distant nations, without 

 in any way detracting from or depreciating the independent origin- 

 ality of local thought, or the true marvels India achieved unaided by 

 foreign teaching. 



In illustration of the preceding remarks, and as the necessary 

 definition of the boundaries of the kingdom to which our initial series 

 of coins refer, I transcribe in full a translation of the original passage 

 from Manu. 



Mann, ii., 17. 22 u Between the two divine rivers, Saeaswati and Dbishad- 

 wati [Chitang], lies the tract of land which the sages have named Bhahma'vakta, 



19. We have indirect evidence to show that this style of writing was in very 

 early currency in association with the monumental cuneiform. I assume that 

 wherever, in the ancient sculptures, we see two scribes employed— the one using 

 a style and marking a clay tablet, the other writing upon a flexible substance— 

 the latter is using cursive Babylonian, or what has since been convention- 

 ally recognised as Phoenician. M. E. Renan considers it is satisfactorily esta- 

 blished, that the Jews used " pliemco-babylomen" letters, at their coming out of 

 Egypt, now placed in b. c. 1312. Renan, « Lan^ues Semitiques,' pp. 108, 216, 

 &c Prinsep's Essays, ii. 145. 



20. Goldstucker, " Pdnini, his place in Sanskrit Literature," London, 1861, pp. 

 12, 227; so also Al wis, " Pali Grammar," Colombo, 1863, p. xli. ; and Cole- 

 brooke's " Misc. Essays," ii. p. 4. 



21. Max Mtiller, " Sanskrit Lit.," London, 1859, p. 521 : and preface to text of 

 fi < Rig Veda," London, 1862, vol. iv. p. ixxiv. 



22. Sir W.Jones's works, London, 1799, vol. iii- Haughton/ c Hindu Law," 

 p. 22. 



