790 Further elucidation of Idt or Silasthambha inscriptions. [SfiPT . 



X. — Further elucidation of the Idt or Silasthambha inscriptions from 

 various sources. By James Prinsep, Sec. As. Soc. 



It was one of my principal objects in publishing my hasty reading 

 of the Feroz lat inscription in the July journal, without awaiting 

 the corrections and illustrations of a more matured examination, to 

 draw to me the aid of others whom ability, opportunity and interest 

 in the subject, might enable to throw light upon this highly curious 

 monument. Already am I reaping abundantly the fruits of this 

 expectation, and I lose no time in placing them before the Society. 



The first correction in point of importance comes as usual from 

 Ceylon, the very Lanka, (to apply its own fabulous prerogative meta- 

 phorically,) — the very first meridian whence the true longitude of all 

 ancient Indian history seems destined to be calculated ! 



1 had ascribed the foundation of these pillar monuments to a king 

 of Ceylon, because his was the nearest or the only approach to the 

 name recorded in the inscription. I did so before I had read it 

 through, or I should perhaps have felt the difficulties of such a sup- 

 position greater when I found him making roads, digging wells, and 

 usurping other secular authority in a country over which he was not 

 himself reigning. It was but the utter absence of any such name in our 

 Indian lists that drove me to a neighbouring state ; one so intimately 

 connected, however, with the Magadha court in religion, that there 

 need be no positive impediment to the exercise of munificence by 

 his brother convert on the Ceylon throne towards the priesthood of king 

 Asoka's Indian Vihdras, nor to their acknowledgment of favors, or 

 adoption of precepts. When I found another inscription in the Gaya 

 caves alluding, with the identical pronbmen of Devdnampiya, to 

 Dasaratha, the grandson of the above monarch, I certainly felt more 

 strongly the impression of the Indian origin of the former ; though I 

 still sought in vain for any licence to such an assumption from the 

 pandits and their purdnas. 



The Society will then I am sure participate in the pleasure with 

 which 1 perused the following passage in a letter just received from 

 the Honorable Mr. George Turnour, our Pali annalist. 



" Since I came down to Colombo, I have made a most important 

 discovery, connected with the Pali Buddhistical literature. You will 

 find in the Introduction to my Epitome, page lx. that a valuable collec- 

 tion of Pali works was brought back to Ceylon from Siam, by George 

 Nadoris, modliar, (chief of the cinnamon department, and then a 

 Buddhist priest) in 1812. In that collection I have found the Dipowanso 

 or Mahdwanso compiled by the fraternity at Anurddhapura to which the 

 Mahdwanso refers ! ! It opens with the passage quoted in the intro- 



