64 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 
period, in material wealth, as it was in intellectual development, claims 
that it has upheld with singular tenacity, under many adverse influ- 
ences, through more than twenty centuries, until European Calcutta, 
at last, superseded the Imperialism of Moghul Delhi. 
I have a more onerous duty to perform in satisfying my readers in 
regard to the date internal evidence would assign to these issues. I 
have previously confessed a difficulty, and admitted that the data for 
testing the age of this coinage by the style of the letters on its surface 
were somewhat uncertain, and in a very elaborate examination of every 
single literalsymbol employed on the varying representatives of the class, 
I came to the conclusion that if certain more archaic forms of letters 
might take the whole series up in point of time, modifications, approach- 
ing to modernisations, might equally reduce individual instances to a 
comparatively late date.* I was prepared to disavow any adhesion to 
the old theory that the fixed lapidary type of Asoka’s inscriptions was 
to constitute the one test of all local time and progress, and the sole 
referee ofall gradations in Paleography, though I was not in a condition 
to cite what I now advance with more confidence—both the exception- 
al and stiff form of a lapidary alphabet, per se, as opposed to the writ- 
ing of everyday life, which last the numismatic letters would more 
readily follow ; but I subordinated the fact that Asoka’s alphabet was 
designed for all India, and although it condescended to admit modified 
dialectic changes, all the inscriptions are supposed to have emanated 
from one official copy, which, however perfect at Palibothra or impos- 
ing at Ganjam, may well have been behind the age in that focus of 
learning to the eastward of the Saraswati, where not only must Indian- 
Pali have been brought to unusual caligraphic perfection, but from its 
contact and association with the Semitic alphabet on the same ground 
and in the same public documents, may be supposed to have achieved 
suggestive progress of its own, and to have risen far above the limita- 
tions of the writing of ordinary uninstructed communities in other 
parts of India; so that, whatever doubts or hesitation I may have felt 
in the once discouraged notion that any approach to perfection existed 
in India prior to Alexander’s advent, I have been forced into, and now 
willingly acknowledge, diametrically opposite convictions, and concur 
in the surprise expressed by the Greeks themselves that the Indians 
were already so far and so independently advanced in civilisation. 
* Prinsep’s “ Essays,” i. p. 207. 

