1850.] Brahminical Conquerors of India. 13 



E3"«t i: t T T 4 T * T"R< "h« 



IrlttTGffJEITimtTl 



" It is evident," he observes, " that by substituting the wedge or 

 arrowhead for the lines in the above inscription, the character would 

 resemble such as are found on the earliest Assyrian monuments/' This 

 is doubtless ; but left as they are, do they not exhibit a type of the 

 earliest form of the Lat character of India?* Again, Mr. Layard 

 gives us a single specimen of a cursive character found also at Nimroud, 

 in fragments of pottery ; also on an alabaster vase with cuneiform 

 writing, containing the name of the Khorsabad king. " It has been 

 found," he says, " on Babylonian bricks of the time of Nebuchad- 

 nezzar." 



i^OAV/^j 



This character I had thought at once recognizable, as the cursive 

 Ario-Bactrian, occurring on the slabs found in the Stuppa of Man- 

 kyala in the Punjab, fac-similes of which are with the Society, and 

 which Professor Wilson (Arian Antiquities) has decyphered, and ar- 

 ranged alphabetically. But our able Secretary, Mr. Laidlay, has re- 

 ferred me to another alphabet, dialectic of the Hebrew, as set forth in 

 the interpretation of the bilingual inscription of Thongga (Journal 

 Asiatique, Fevrier, 1 843) to which be conceives the characters of this 

 brief specimen may be considered more properly to belong. Another 

 copy of this inscription (Trans, of the American Ethnological Society, 

 Vol. I.) by Mr. Catherwood who terms it Punico-Lybian, confirms 

 this view, 



* It will require but a cursory reference to James Prinsep's table of the Lat 

 characters (As. Soc. Journal, Vol. VII.) to establish the affinity of the above letters 

 with the oldest Lat form in use about 500 years B. C. perhaps in a transition state 

 from the cuneiform to the lineal character ? 



