76 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 1. 



a range of three centuries to his No. I, or Lat characters, and of 

 four centuries to No. IV. of the Guzerat plates. 



Later chronologists have, however, missed the spirit of his table, 

 and have used it in such a manner as to lead to serious mistakes. 

 A distinguished antiquarian has lately taken so narrow a view 

 of the table in question, as to argue an inscription* to be of 

 the 10th century simply because it happened to be in a character 

 very near the Kutila, without making any allowance for the range 

 which that character must have had, the locality where the document 

 was found, or the date which it bore. This, in our humble opinion, 

 is a very unphilosophical mode of drawing conclusions. The inscrip- 

 tion now submitted, compared with such inscriptions of this type 

 as have been already published, will shew that the Kutila characters 

 were current over a large tract, for upwards of four centuries. 



The era of the document is Samvat, but whether of the sovereign 

 of Oujjein or of Balhabi or of the Pal Eajas of Bengal, does not 

 appear. It may, however, be very reasonably taken to be that of 

 Vicramaditya, considering that the Balhabi Samvat did not extend 

 much beyond Rajputaua, and the Pala Samvat would bring down the 

 inscription to a period when the Kutila had been entirely superseded 

 by the modern Deva Nagari. 



The following is a transcript of the inscription. 



fe ^fTT3T % ( ? ) K (?) tR^T X X. im^PTTS^T gWf" 1K*G sfafe- 



K. M. 



* I have now in hand a paper on the era of Bhoja, in which the claims of this 

 inscription will be discussed in detail. 



