1837.] Account of the Tooth relic of Ceylon, 857 



with a translation of the inscriptions on the Delhi hit ; facsimiles of 

 which are published in vol. VII. of the Asiatic Researches. 



These facsimiles are, for the most part, executed with so much 

 fidelity ; and in the few instances in which one letter has been mis- 

 taken for another, and symbols have been misapplied or omitted, the 

 inaccuracies are so readily corrected, by conformity either to the 

 grammatical construction of the language, or to the obvious significa- 

 tion of each passage ; that the task assigned to me has been as facile, 

 as the interest kept up to the last moment, in the expectation that 

 some specific date, or historical data, would ultimately be developed, 

 was intensely engrossing. 



The only faulty fraction of these four inscriptions (each facing one 

 of the cardinal points of the compass) in regard to the revision, of 

 which I entertain any serious doubt, is the first moiety of the third 

 line in the inscription fronting the north ; and it so happens that it is 

 precisely those three words which embody the explanation of the 

 main object had in view in recording these inscriptions. 



To these all-important words in the identical letters in which they 

 are represented in the facsimile, I am not able to attach any signifi- 

 cation, commensurate, or in keeping with designs of sufficient 

 magnitude to have led to the erection of columns, such as these, at 

 places so celebrated, and so remote from each other, as Delhi, 

 Allahabad, Patna and Bettiah. Those three words as exhibited in the 

 facsimile are [^ fa ^ U -J A ^rb' U C* G t" i- If ' however > on re " ex " 

 amination of the columns it should be found that the correct reading is 



\r>'k WA >t\j±'{ &!»rb 



and the correction, it will be seen, only involves the variation of 

 a few minute symbols, easily misread in an ancient inscription, and 

 the substitution of the letter _|_ for (j which also might be allowably 

 confounded in the transcript, it will scarcely be possible to exaggerate 

 the importance of the results produced, in reference to the interesting 

 historical information which these inscriptions would, in that case, 

 develope. Besides enabling us to fix the date of the record, and to 

 identify the recording emperor, it will satisfactorily confirm the 

 authenticity of certain Buddhistical historical annals of the close of 

 the third century of our era, professing to be contemporaneous with 

 the signal events they record, the most prominent of which is the 

 conversion of the Rdjadhirdja, or emperor of all India of that age 

 to Buddhism. 



It would be an idle waste of time to adduce the various hypo- 

 thetical considerations which crowd around this investigation, tend- 



