862 Asiatic Society. [No. 104, 



is employed in the inscriptions, to render the translations from the Babylonian into the 

 ancient Persian. The character being once decyphered, the language to which it is ap- 

 propriated will no doubt be found cognate with the Pheenician, and I assert with confi- 

 dence, that the knowledge thus obtained will open to us (always following the Mosai- 

 cal early history of the world) an insight into the common original language of man- 

 kind, as thousands of bricks stamped with this writing are found in the foundations of 

 the tower of Babel, and must have been placed there before the confusion of tongues, 

 when the language spoken in the plain of Shinar, was, I suppose it will be admitted, the 

 same that Adam and Eve used in Paradise, and this I believe is about the ultimate 

 limit that antiquarianism reaches ; joking apart, however, there is no doubt but the read- 

 ing of this character will give us a decent knowledge of the history of Assyria and 

 Babylonia from Nimus to Sadanapalus and Nebuchadnezar; the records are most 

 ample. 



"The inscription on Hutton's antique, gives the title of the king as Palash (the Vola- 

 gases of the Greeks) and from the style of the Pehleivee writing, probably refers to the 

 Sassanian monarch of that name ; but I have not yet satisfied myself as to the exact 

 meaning of the entire legend. I have a vast number of impressions of Sassanian gems 

 with legends, and willendeavour some day to give you a paper on them ; but the subject 

 is very obscure, and requires a still greater field of collation, than I have hitherto suc- 

 ceeded in accumulating. 



" Coins are scarce in this part of the country, and the nomenclature of Bactrian and 

 Melo-Scythian numismatology is, I fancy, pretty well exhausted, but all the useful 

 part of the science requires, as I have already observed, still to be elaborated." 



The Officiating Secretary submitted a note of charges for the printing of Part 2d, Vol. 

 II of the Researches of the Society, and again suggested that a volume of Transactions 

 might be prepared in octavo, should the Committee of Papers determine that the 

 materials, which the Officiating Secretary was prepared to submit to them, were of a 

 nature to admit of publication; the octavo form was, the Officiating Secretary observed, 

 of advantage, not only as regarded the saving of expence, but also for facility of carriage, 

 which was a matter of some importance for a Society which communicated with cor- 

 responding members at so great a distance as did the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 



(Suggestion referred to the Committee of Papers.,) 



Read a letter from Capt. T. S. Burt, of which the following is a copy — 



" Since my letter to you of the 19th October, I have been over to Chitore, and 

 taken facsimiles of the inscriptions I met with there ; their age is about 750 years, as 

 well as I can make out; Tod speaks of those on the lofty pillar, but not of two others, 

 which I found in an old temple there ; I shall defer sending them to Calcutta for the 

 present. 



" I have found some images of marble at Ajmere, 650 years of age, with inscriptions 

 on their pedestals. 



