1046 Note on Col. Sykes' Inscriptions. [Dec, 



rather than an s, although we have thus a collision hetween two vowels. 

 Kali dtasa hceranika putasa sulisadatasa thakapurisasa chetiya ghara 

 niyuta dayadhama. 

 In Sanskrit : 



*' The pious act of Sulisadatta, lord of the city of Thaka, the son of Kali' 

 a'ta (or Ka.lyarta) the gold merchant, for the attendants on the chaitya-tem- 

 ple." 



The name of the rich person at whose expense the cave was appa- 

 rently dug or ornamented, may be translated ' given by the sun' — equi- 

 valent to Apollodotus of the Greeks ; it may also be read Sutisa datta 

 (given of Siva) ; both are somewhat at variance with a Baaddha pro- 

 fession. The town over which he ruled looks very like Thdkurpura. 



No. 5, of the same plate, is ' enclosed in a panel, over the western 

 cistern near the large reservoir in the Sainhadra caves.' 

 Kali dtekasa kutiraputasa sudhana 

 Kdnasa saghakasa udhi dayadhama. 



Here the four opening letters are the same us in the last example, 

 but they are followed by a k, and the rest of the name is different. The 

 doubtful word in the second line is evidently the same as one in the 

 second inscription, where from following satagabham with a conjunctive 

 * cha it seemed to denote some similar object of art. From the posi- 

 tion of the present inscription, that object could be no other than a 

 reservoir for water, and from analogy to the primitive alphabet the 

 initial letter should be the vowel L or u. In Wilson's dictionary I 

 accordingly found the word ^"^ : udhras, water, whence would naturally 

 be formed ^3ljft udhri, or in Pali, udhi, a tank, or water reservoir. Again 

 the letter t of putasa more resembled a bh, which if so would make the 

 reading kutira pubhasa (Sanskrit <ji*K5P*^T kutira prabhasya or pra- 

 lhavasya, enlightening or born in a cottage) — and the whole sentence : 



*' This tank is the pious work of Kali' Ataka the humbly born, the honest 

 acquirer of wealth, the deceased (gone to heaven, swargdgasya?)" 



The modification of the letter dh should be particularly noted as it 

 might easily be taken for a v, but for the known word dhama. 



No. 6. This is one of the most curious of the series because of 

 the exact accordance of the initial symbol with the monogram on a 

 large series of the Indo-Scythic coins, commencing with the reverse of 

 the celebrated Mokadphises coin. There can be little doubt that these 

 signs, placed at the head of every written document, and stampt on 

 the field of every die are, like the aum of the brahmans, the cross of 



