496 Sanscrit Inscription from Behar. [June, 



from the mound. There is one of Ila giving birth to Sakya ; the child 

 is jumping from her side whilst she holds the branch of a tree ; heavenly 

 musicians are playing and her attendants are with her. I tried to ob- 

 tain this, but they would not sell it, though they readily sold the 

 inscription ; however, afterwards, some ignorant Brahmans upbraided 

 the zemindar for so doing. I removed the slab to Behar, where I took 

 perfect fac-similes in triplicate, and returned it to the village, where I 

 had it fixed in a niche in the outer wall of the modern temple above 

 described, having first engraved in English on the margin the date of its 

 being recovered and set up by me for preservation on account of 

 Government. I hoped to inspire confidence by this means and thereby in- 

 duce people to disclose any other such mounds, of which I have no doubt 

 there must be many where these great ruins exist ; Bargaon, Lettara- 

 wa, Yogespur, &c. &c. &c. It is very difficult to gain any information 

 in Zillah Behar, the people are bearish and ill-disposed in the extreme. 

 I have here traced part of the first line of the inscription to give an idea 

 of the style of writing,* which is a good specimen of an early type of 

 Mithila Nagri, that in which most of the inscriptions on the Idols are 

 written, more or less modified ; the letter M, n, is written *r, which is 

 but a slight remove from ^ of the Gupta writings. I attach much weight 

 to these apparently trifling variations, as I feel convinced that they aid 

 materially in deciding the date of sculptures and writings. In the pre- 

 sent case for instance, I am inclined to think that Devapala, whose 

 name occurs in Abul Fazl's list, in the copper plate from Monghyr and 

 that from Dinajpiir, as an early sovereign of the Pala dynasty of 

 Goura or Bengal (vide Prinsep's Useful Tables, p. 117) must have 

 reigned in the 9th century of our era the style of writing even in 

 Narayanpala's time being of a more modern stamp though early dates 

 are found in inscriptions of a like type. The Dinajpur plate gives 

 1027 S. as the date of Vigrahapala ; Deopal or Devapala is 8th in 

 succession before him ; allowing 25 years as an average for each reign, 

 we have 7 intervening, or 25 * 7= 175—1027; leaving 852 Sumbut for 

 the approximate period of Devapala' s reign ; consequently of our inscrip- 

 tion, albeit Abul Fazl gives 1050 S. as the date, there are other rea- 

 sons for supposing him to be in error, the inscriptions found by me 



* We have thought it worth while lithographing a fac simile of this line in Plate 

 XXXIV.-Eds. 



