1838.] rocks of Girnar in Gvjerat, and Dhauli in Cuttaclc. 271 



But there is no occasion to go further : — all will acknowledge that 



the language of the inscription is not Sanskrit What is it then ? To 



answer this question I must solicit still a little space. First however I 

 must take a review of the Girnar alphabet, for it is evident that it con- 

 tains many additions to the more simple elements of the pillars. These 

 additions, to which only I have time to allude, will be found to complete 

 the alphabet to the existing standard of the Pali of Ceylon. 



§ 1. Completion of the Alphabet. 

 The most remarkable change observable in the alphabet has al- 

 ready been noticed in my paper of last June, namely the substitution of 

 the letter j for .J in all words now written with an r in Sanskrit, but 



on the pillars spelt with an I, as "vJ C P rU-uU, &c. now corrected to 

 r £~ i^rb I v6jg>9 dasaratha, &c. Although there are many words 

 in the Sanskrit in which the use of the / and r is indifferent, still the 

 invariable employment of the former liquid, does not appear to have 

 been ascribed to any of the numerous Pi akrits or even the Apabhran- 

 sas, by the Sanskrit grammarians. In a succinct account of the pecu- 

 liarities of the latter extracted by the learned Prof. Lassen from 

 the Prakrit grammar called Kalpataru^ we find only one allusion to 

 the intermutation of r and / .*— > 



Siet Drdvidi littera? n permutatione, Pasch£tya immutatione r et I. 



Now the Paschdtyajd are those born in the west (of India), and we 

 should thence expect the Gujerdt orthography rather than that of Cut- 

 tack, Delhi or Allahabad to be deficient in the distinction of the two 

 liquids, unless indeed the term were employed by a writer of Bengal, 

 for they like ourselves give the name of western provinces ( sc. of this 

 presidency) to all west of Allahabad and the Ganges ; and of east, only 

 to those east of Patna. The exclusive use oil belongs to the Chinese 

 family of nations. 



Of other letters made known by the Girnar tablets we may notice 

 first in order the [y or gh, which can no longer be denied a place, or con- 

 founded with any other letter, because it now occurs in the well known 

 word gharistdni (S. grihastdnij, and inmegha, ghara, ghdta, &c. of the 

 Kalinga and Sainhadri inscriptions. These words it must be observed 

 occur only in those tablets of the Cuttack inscription wherein the letter 

 | is used, and which so far resemble in dialect those of Girnar. The 

 orthography of grihastdni on the pillars is girithdni. It does not there- 

 fore follow necessarily, though there is every probability thereof, 

 that the g is never used for gh ; but when we find the aspirate pre- 

 2 m 2 



