SHORT NOTES. 205 
A Buddhist Votive Tablet. 
Some years ago the late Mr. H. Vaughan Stevens dis- 
covered in Kédah in a cave, nine feet below the floor, a number: 
of fragmentary clay tablets stamped with inscriptions. These 
he forwarded to the Singapore Maseum, where they now are, 
accompanying them with a letter explaining where he had found 
them. 
By the courtesy of the Curator I have been enabled to 
submit a photograph of the largest and best preserved of these 
tablets to Professor Kern of Leyden, who in reply to my request 
was good enough to examine it and writes as follows:— ‘After 
repeated attempts I have given up the hope of deciphering the 
whole. The writing is Nagari of the 10th century, approxim- 
ately, and therefore the tablet is from Northern India. At the 
top I discern parts of the well known Buddhist formula : 
ye dharma hetu prbha, etc., 
The first line shows hetuprabha ; the second sam hetu-tathdga-; 
the third tesém . . ca (?) yo nirodha-; the fourth . . vddi manah 
sarve; the fifth sams Kara. Further I can distinguish some 
letters, but without being able to make out an intelligible context. 
Most probably the whole tablet is filled up with the common 
formula of the Buddhist creed.” 
The formula here referred to is clearly the one which 
occurs also in certain other inscriptions found in Kédah and 
Province Wellesley, which will be found in Indo-Chinese Essays, 
Series I, Vol. 1. These were dealt with, by Professor Kern, in 
Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van 
Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, 3de Reeks, Deel 1. He 
assigns them to the period 400 A. D. These however are ina 
South Indian form of alphabet (and from such form the existing 
Far Eastern alphabets are in the main derived), whereas the 
ao tablet now dealt with points to influences from Northern 
ndia, 
Evidently, therefore, both Northern and Southern India 
have contributed something towards the civilization of the 
Malayan regions. 
R. A. Soc., No. 39, 1903. 
