1849.] On an Inscription from Keddah. 247 



On an Inscription from Keddah, by Lieut. -Col. Low. 



I have the pleasure to forward to you, to be presented to the 

 Asiatic Society, a fac-simile of another inscription, in the same 

 character apparently as that in which one of the inscriptions lately 

 transmitted to you by me was couched, and which I found very lately, 

 and after that last had been forwarded. 



It may not however be of much importance, and I apprehend may 

 prove but some religious text of the Buddhists or some other sects. 

 It was lying under the centre of the foundation of a ruin of an ancient 

 brick building in Keddah, near Buket Murriam. This building had 

 been very small, not more than 10 or 12 feet square. When I 

 raised the slab of stone, it was coated with a tenaceous film of carbonate 

 of lime, produced by the coral stones of the foundation having decom- 

 posed. The stone being a sort of slate, this has enabled me to bring 

 out all the letters (a few only being at first visible) by the application 

 of nitric acid. The inscription is in perfect preservation. 



I have the pleasure also to send another piece of the Singapore stone ; 

 there are several ponderous masses remaining, but that part of the 

 inscription which are on them are the most defaced. I will try how- 

 ever, when I have leisure, to copy such parts as are at all capable of 

 being taken off, but the stone is so rough that this will be difficult to 

 accomplish. 



Note on the foregoing. 



Col. Low's inscription possesses, I think, sufficient interest to warrant 

 the insertion of a reduced fac-simile in the Journal, and I give it ac- 

 cording in Plate X. There is no difficulty in recognising in the first 

 two lines the well known formula Ye dharmma hetu prabhavd, &c. ; 

 but, if I am not mistaken, it is in a form of the Sanskrit alphabet much 

 older than any in which it has been discovered elsewhere. We have in 

 the Museum — thanks to the zeal of Capt. Kittoe — a goodly assortment 

 of Buddhist sculptures from Behar, containing these verses mostly in the 

 Kutila modification of the Sanskirt character, which belongs to the 



2 K 



