272 Inscription in the old character on the [March, 



sent in other words of the same monuments, such as ghanti, sanghathasi, 

 &c. we are bound not unnecessarily to aspirate the simple g, where it 

 can be read without doing so. Thus the word aga of the inscription 

 must be read as agra <3P&, rather than agha, ^^ ; and Mr. 

 Turnour's reading of ogdya and agena in the opening of the pillar 

 edict is correct; while my own reading, aghdya, aghena, must be 

 abandoned. I am the more anxious to acknowledge my error, and 

 make the amende to my friend, our only Pali scholar, because at the 

 end of the sixth tablet we find the same adjective employed : — ridam 

 anata agcnapardkamena, ' this with the utmost respectful force,' — here 

 the sense insisted upon by my pandit of * than which all else is sinful" 

 cannot certainly be applied to pardkrama, heroism, on account of the 

 context. 



The nasal of the first class of consonants, or gutturals has not been 

 yet recovered, because its place is generally supplied by the anuswara ; 

 but in one or two places I think the ^ may be traced in its primitive 

 form of C : at any rate it may be safely constructed so, from the 

 analogy of the form in the No. 2 alphabet T^ also found on the coins 

 in the name Simha vikrama (written sometimes *)c singhaj, and from 

 the more modern form of the Tibetan c; ng. ^ 



The letter jh »fi, is of rare occurrence, even in the Sanskrit. It is 

 not therefore to be wondered at, that we should be tardy of discovering 

 it in the ancient alphabet. Yet in Pali this letter takes the place of 

 the Sanskrit ^J in madhya, madhyamo, < middle,' and perhaps of rj in 

 nirjita and of rdy and ryy and other similar compounds which in pro- 

 nunciation assimilate to jh ; and it is thus more likely to be found in a 

 Pali than a Sanskrit monument. On my first review of the pillar al- 

 phabet I was inclined to look upon the letter f as jh, from its occur- 

 rence in the word y ^ y majhimd, coupled with ukasd and gevayd, 

 domestics and ascetics, but it seemed better explained by ri in other 

 places. A similar expression in one of the Girnar again leads me 

 to consider it as jh, viz. « sankhitena, rnajhamena, vistitena,' where 



the central word is written y f y J_ both in the Girnar and in the 

 Dhauli versions of the concluding paragraph. Again in the pillars it 

 is generally inflected with the i or the d vowel mark, which could not 

 be the case with rt ; and lastly, it bears considerable affinity to the 

 Bengali 3* jh which also resembles the ri of the same alphabet ; I there- 

 fore now pronounce f without hesitation to be &jh; and I must modify 

 former readings accordingly*. 



*This it is not difficult to accomplish : ex. gr. in the western tablet of the Fernz 

 I6t, n&santan nijhipayitd d&namdahanti, may be Sanskritized as follows : ^r^Wf«TWf 



