CONCERNING SOME OLD SANSKRIT. 99 



Province Wellesley as being of approximately the same date 

 i. e. as belonging to the same century. The inscriptions from 

 Wenggi were determined by Burnell — too early lost to science ! 

 — as being of the fourth century (ll) and in my opinion, (the 

 grounds for which I have already published) the views of that 

 scholar cannot be far wrong. I should therefore give the date 

 of Buddhagupta's inscription as being roughly 400 A. D. (12) 

 It is undoubtedly the oldest Buddhist fragment yet found in 

 these parts unless indeed the Kedah inscription is given the 

 preference. In view of the fact that the characters in the two 

 inscriptions notably differ— especially in the ka and na and 



that the difference in type points to different places of origin, 

 a comparison of the two can lead to no reliable conclusion. 



Different again is the type of some of the rock-inscriptions 

 at Tokun, a place lying in the middle of Province Wellesleys 

 The seven fragments copied by Colonel Low and published on 

 Plate IV (13) of the Journal mentioned are so small and, in 

 part, so indistinct that they have no value except as contribu- 

 tions to palaeography. 



No. 1 I can decipher in part only. It begins with 

 sarvva which is written quite distinctly and in nearly the same 

 type of characters as is Buddhagupta's inscription. The word 

 following seems to represent drama or drdmam — monastery- 

 garden. The remaining few groups of letters are indecipher- 

 able. 



No. 2 is in different characters which seem to me, judg- 

 ing from the great development of the vowel-sign for i. to be 

 not older than the 6th century. The type reminds me of that 



(11) South Indian Palaeography PI. XX and XXI. 



(12) The oldest inscriptions in the Talaing Country in Pegu are 

 in ths same Wenggi-type an d according to Dr. E. Porchammer date 

 from the fourth Century A.D. ' The oldest Talaing inscriptions date 

 back to the 4th Century A. D. and the lythic characters are almost 

 identical with the Dravidian-Vengi alphabet of the same period.' 

 See notes on Buddhist Law by the Judicial Commissioner British 

 Burma (John Jardine) III Marriage page X. 



(13) (Misc. Papers relating to Indo-China Vol. I page 231). 

 R. A. Soe., No. 49, 1907. 



