566 Interpretation of the inscription [July, 



VI. Interpretation of the most ancient of the inscriptions on the pillar 



called the Ut of Feroz Shah, near Delhi, and of the Allahabad, 

 Radhia and Mattiah pillar, or Ut, inscriptions which agree therewith. 

 By James Prinsep, Sec. As. Soc, #c. 



I now proceed to lay before the Society the results of my application 

 x>{ the alphabet, developed by the simple records of Bhilsa, to the cele- 

 brated inscription on Feroz's column, of which facsimiles have been in 

 the Society's possession since its very foundation, without any success- 

 ful attempt having been made to decipher them. This is the less to be 

 wondered at when we find that 500 years before, on the re-erection 

 of the pillar, perhaps for the second or third time, by the emperor 

 Feroz, the unknown characters were just as much a mystery to the 

 learned as they have proved at a later period — "Round it" says the 

 author of the Haftaklim, "have been engraved literal characters 

 which the most intelligent of all religions have been unable to explain. 

 Report says, this pillar is a monument of renown to the rajas or 

 Hindu princes, and that Feroz Shah set it up within his hunting 

 place: but on this head there are various traditions which it woukj 

 be tedious to relate." 



Neither Muhammed Ami'n the author of the Haftaklim, nor Ferish- 

 teh, in his account of Feroz's works alludes to the comparatively 

 modern inscription on the same pillar recording the victories of 

 Visala Deva king of Sdcambhari (or Sdmbhar) in the 1 2th century, of 

 which Sir William Jones first, and Mr. Colebrooke afterwards, 

 published translations in the first and seventh volumes of the Re- 

 searches. This was in quite a modern type of Nagari ; differing about 

 as much from the character employed on the Allahabad pillar to record 

 the victories of Chandra and Samudra-gupta, as that type is now 

 perceived to vary from the more ancient form originally engraven on 

 both of these pillars; so that (placing Chandra-gupta, in the third 

 or fourth century, midway between Visala, in the Samvat year 1220, 

 and the oldest inscription) we might have roughly deduced an anti- 

 quity of fourteen or fifteen centuries anterior to Visala's reign for the 

 original Idt alphabet, from the gradual change of form in the alpha- 

 betical symbols, had we no better foundation for fixing the period of 

 these monuments. 



But in my preceding notice, I trust that this point has been set at 

 rest, and that it has been satisfactorily proved that the several pillars of 

 Delhi, Allahabad, Mattiah and Radhia were erected under the orders of 



