1840.] Asiatic Society. 861 



" It was with extreme gratification that I received your letter of September 9th, a 

 few days ago, enclosing the official notice of my admission into the Asiatic Society, and 

 conveying to me the very flattering offer of acting as Corresponding Secretary to your 

 institution across the Indus; fond as I am of the study of antiquities, there could hardly 

 be a greater pleasure to me, than filling the situation you propose, which would place 

 me in communication with all the most skilful antiquaries and numismatologists of 

 India, but really and truly, I have not the time to bestow on the duties of so fascinating 

 an employment ; being now in a laborious and responsible Political situation, I feel it 

 incumbent on me to sacrifice, to a due fulfilment of my public duties, those pursuits 

 which for many years past have formed my chief study and delight, and which when 

 I am once fairly engaged on them, possess for me all the attraction that attaches 

 the opium-eater to his drug. I have now brought myself to eschew antiquities upon 

 principle, leaving unfinished several papers for which I am pledged to Societies in 

 London, Paris, and Vienna, and it would be perfect ruin to me to be subjected afresh 

 to the temptations which the office of your Corresponding Secretary would necessarily 

 throw in my way. Edward Connoly would have been a most zealous and efficient 

 coadjutor, and would probably have had it in his power to command the requisite 

 leisure, but, alas ! you will have heard long since of his untimely fate, and I doubt 

 if there is any one in the country qualified to supply his place. 



" I should like, if I found during the winter that public business was not very press- 

 ing, to give you a series of letters to be published monthly in your Journal, tracing 

 the outlines of such Historical and Geographical information as we possess regarding 

 Affghanistan from the earliest ages to the present day, and inviting inquiry on all mat- 

 ters of interest referring to the different epochs, but I could promise nothing more than 

 outlines, for I certainly have not the information (and I almost doubt its being pro- 

 curable) to fill up details, or attempt any thing like analysis ; something of the sort 

 however certainly requires to be done; hitherto the numismatical discoveries have 

 hardly been turned to any account ; we have a long list of names, but there has been 

 no attempt to appropriate them to the different tribes and dynasties of which, chiefly 

 through the Chinese authorities, we can darkly trace the succession in the regions be- 

 tween the Oxus and the Indus, still less has there been any endeavour to affiliate these 

 tribes, or to work out their descent into the page of modern history. 



" I beg to return you my best thanks for the impression of Pottinger's cylinder, it is 

 a relic at least as ancient as the times of Cyrus and Darius, and must have travelled 

 from the banks of the Euphrates to the spot where it was found in the Paropamisan 

 mountains. The inscription is in the Hieartic Babylonian character, and is in fact 

 the usual formula (probably a prayer) found upon all these sacred cylinders. This 

 character, which is the third or complicated class of cuneiform writing, is crept in 

 a few signs conjecturally rendered by Burnouf, altogether undecypherable. It is 

 probably syllabic, and certainly embodies a Semitic language. The means of rendering 

 it intelligible are, however, I believe, in existence, and if I ever return to Persia, and 

 can devote a year or two to the task, I do not despair of mastering it by the assist- 

 ance of the Zend literal cuneiform characters, which I perfectly understand, and which 



