856 Account of the Tooth relic of Ceylon. [Oct. 



she borrows her name, who looks as pale, as silver tinsel can make 

 him. One of her left hands grasps a club (gada), the other a yellow 

 rapper. Her vahan is a goose, rara avis, red turned up with white. A 

 tiger lies crouched at her feet. This idol is much esteemed. The rajas 

 of Dewass pay it regular visits, ground is set apart for its support, 

 and for 30 miles round ; every poor woman who hopes to be called 

 " mother" pays her devotion at the shrine, and fixes a cow-dung 

 swastica, on the rock. As you descend the hill, the capital of the great 

 state of Dewass, a city of huts, delights the eye ; no tree obscures 

 the view ; could Sadi have seen it, with its two rajas, two courts, 

 two palaces and two saddars, he would have retracted his stanza of 

 the "■ Do Dervaish." V Quid si vidisset Democritus ?" 



III. — Account of the Tooth relic of Ceylon, supposed to be alluded to in 

 the opening passage of the Feroz Idt inscription. By the Hon'ble 

 George Turnour, Esq. Ceylon Civil Service. 



Mr. Prinsep has, doubtless, already explained to the Asiatic 

 Society, the circumstances under which he has been enabled to render 

 another important service to the cause of oriental research, by the 

 discovery of the alphabet in which the inscriptions engraven on the 

 columns at Delhi, Allahabad, Patna and Bettiah (all precisely of the 

 same tenor and in the same character) ; as well as the inscriptions 

 found on various other monuments of antiquity scattered over different 

 parts of India, are recorded. When, on the one hand, the multipli- 

 city of these ancient monuments, still extant in Asia, is considered ; 

 and on the other, it is found that the age in which, and the object for 

 which, these inscriptions were engraven, have been shrouded under 

 an impenetrable veil, for centuries past, some idea may be formed, 

 even by those who have not devoted themselves to investigations of 

 this nature, of the possible extent of the application of this discovery ; 

 and the consequent value of the service rendered. In the department 

 more especially of numismatics, in which Mr. Prinsep's researches 

 have been so eminently successful, he has already shown in the May 

 Journal of the Asiatic Society, the only number published since his 

 discovery, the important results to which that discovery is destined to 

 lead, in that branch also of Asiatic investigation. 



Finding that the alphabet thus deciphered bore a close affinity to 

 that in which some of the ancient inscriptions in Ceylon are inscribed ; 

 and at once perceiving that the language in which the hitherto unde- 

 ciphered inscriptions on the columns above mentioned were composed 

 was the Mdgadhi or Pali, Mr. Prinsep lost no time in imparting his 

 discovery to me ; coupled with the request that I would furnish him 



