8 Decipherment of a Sanskrit Inscription. [No. 1. 



May happiness ever attend the scribe and the reader of this com- 

 position. Be there auspiciousness ! 

 Fort-Saugor, September 2nd, 1857. 



inscription has so much to say of traders, it is just possible that Mahdjana may 

 intend this class of persons, and not 'great' or * respectable.' The word, it should 

 seem, sometimes bears this sense in Sanskrit ; but, perhaps, by insensible or 

 ignorant adoption of the signification attached to it in the spoken languages. See 

 Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, &c, Vol. II. p. 303, foot note; 8vo. edition. 



The continuous notation, observed on the stone, of the metrical portion of this 

 record has been followed in the transcript now edited. 



These fourteen stanzas are all in the Vaktra measure, three of those which 

 succeed the prose being excepted. That numbered as the seventh is S'ubhd or 

 Buddhi. I shall recur, on a future occasion, to the class of mixed metres to 

 which this appertains. The metre of the eighth stanza is likewise composite, a 

 species of upojdti, but of which I can discover no specific appellation. Its first 

 and fourth quarters are Indravojrd ; its second, Vans' astha ; and the third, Indra- 

 vans'd. The thirteenth stanza is S&lini. 



I avail myself of this opportunity to rectify an error into which I have fallen 

 regarding the acceptation of the phrase pdddnudhydta. See p. 226 of vol. 

 xxvii. of this Journal, foot-note. My opinion there expressed, besides having 

 the weighty support of Colebrooke, was based upon an examination of all the 

 instances, accessible to me when I wrote, of the employment of this locution. 

 But it appears, from two examples occurring in the same inscription, that it some- 

 times indicates merely a kindred successor, or, perhaps, only a successor. Where, 

 of two brothers, elder and younger, the latter accedes to the throne in sequence to 

 the former, the words pdddnudhydta are, in the cases alluded to, used to denote 

 their relation as consecutive princes. See the Journal of the Bombay Branch of 

 the Royal Asiatic Society, for January, 1851, pp. 219 and 220. 



