120 Notes on Sanskrit Inscriptions from Mathura. [No. 2, 



found that out of 10 facsimiles of Mr. Bayley, the Society had 

 received the originals of only 8, and out of 18 transcripts of 

 General Cunningham, only 11 were forthcoming, the rest being 

 missing, most probably converted into ballast for the repair of 

 roads by some Benthamite overseer in the Public Works Depart- 

 ment ; for in reply to my enquiry on the subject, Mr. Bayley wrote 

 to me, "I fear some of Cunningham's are hopelessly gone, as I 

 could not find them, and a good deal of stone-breaking had gone 

 on in the meanwhile." 



Among the missing stones was a most important dated one, 

 which in the two sets of facsimiles appeared to differ in their details. 

 There were, however, among the stones sent to the Society, two 

 originals which were not included in either set of the facsimiles. 



The inscriptions were all more or less defaced, worn out and 

 smudgy, and it was by filling up the interstices of the letters with 

 powdered black-lead, that I could read some of them. Others it 

 was impossible to decvpher, and the facsimiles now presented to the 

 readers of the Journal (plates IV, V, VI and VII.) are, to a great 

 extent, imperfect. They are taken from General Cunningham's tran- 

 scripts, with such corrections and emendations as a careful ex- 

 amination of the original and comparison with Mr. Bayley's 

 transcripts would warrant, leaving all doubtfid letters as they 

 were read by the General. 



Fourteen of the inscriptions are inscribed on bases of pillars, 

 three occur on the pedestals of statues, one on a stone ladder, one on 

 an oblong slab, and one on a stupa or chatty a, i. e., model of a funer- 

 al monument. According to General Cunningham " altogether 

 the bases of 30 pillars were discovered, of which 15 were inscribed 

 with the names of the donors who presented the columns to the 

 monastery." But, he says, " as one of these gifts consisted of 6 

 pillars, a second of 25 pillars, and a third of 26 pillars, there still 

 remain 40 columns to be discovered, which will bring up the total 

 number to 70."* The inscriptions from which these facts have been 



8th. A figure similar to the above, but with the halo broken, about 5| feet 

 ( 887 B.) 



9th. A Buddhist naked female figure about 4 feet high. 

 * Loc. cit. p. 4. 



