27 G Inscription in the old character on the [March, 



gupta inscription, but that little is all in favor of their superior anti- 

 quity. 



Of the more recent alphabets it is unnecessary to say any thing. 

 The Tibetan is acknowledged to be of the seventh century. The Kutila 

 alphabet is taken from the inscription sent down in facsimile by Colonel 

 Stacy from Bareilly : — we learn thence that the artist was of Canouj, 

 and we see that the Bengali, which was drawn from the same focus of 

 learning near a century afterwards, does not differ more from it, than 

 the modifications it has undergone since it was domiciled in the lower 

 provinces will explain ; — indeed all old Sanskrit inscriptions from Bena- 

 res to Cuttack differ only from the Kutila type in having the triangular 

 loop, T, instead of the round one ?. 



A hundred other modifications of the primitive character might be 

 easily introduced, were I to travel southward or to cross to Ava or 

 Ceylon ; but I purposely avoid swelling the table ; and include only those 

 epochas of the Indian alphabet which can now be proved from undenia- 

 ble monuments. On a former occasion (Vol. VI. p. 222) the Amaravati, 

 Hala Canara and Telinga alphabets were traced to the Gupta as their 

 prototype, and thus might others be deduced: but another opportunity 

 must be sought of placing the whole in a comprehensive table*. 



In conclusion, I may again regret that our printers did not take for 

 their standard the form that would have served to blend the Bengali 

 and the Hindi into a common system ! 



§ 2. Language of the Girnar inscriptions. 



I must now say a few < last words' on the language or dialect of 

 the Gujerat edict as contrasted with that of the Cuttack copy, and the 

 idiom of the pillars. The glossary which I have appended to the trans- 

 lation of each tablet has almost anticipated all I might have reserved 

 for this branch of my discussion. Reading, as Mr. Turnour justly 

 observes, through a Sanskritized medium, with a pandit at my elbow, and 

 without a Pali dictionary (if such a thing exists), my only method of 

 coming at the sense has been by finding corresponding Sanskrit words 

 in every case ; — and so close is the analogy of the two languages, that 

 in most cases little more was necessary than to subjoin an r after a 

 p, or a y after an * ; and to change final o into the visarga. 



All doubt as to the pre-existence of the Sanskrit in its purest state 

 being set aside by the simultaneous production of a monument of 

 Asoka's time, I need not trouble myself to prove the necessity of the 

 existence of a higher and more remote model to account for the marked 



* Captain Harkness has lately published a very useful volume of the south, 

 em alphabets, but none reach up even to our third series in antiquity. 



