50 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Jan. 



1815, and to Agra at the end of that year; thence to Muradabad in 1820 ; 

 and to Calcutta in 1827 as (officiating supernumerary) member of the 

 lower Board of Revenue. He became Commissioner of Revenue and 

 Circuit for Arracan in 1827, and entered the Sudder Court in 1836. He 

 died in August 1838." He was possibly a son of the elder Halhed, and 

 the author of the translation, and somebody to whom the name of the elder 

 was familiar by mistake addressed him N. B. instead of N. J. It is 

 more probable, however, that the elder was the translator, whose 

 work was sent out to the son for some comparison or other.* This ap- 

 pears the more likely, as Sir Charles Wilkins was in the India House 

 at the time when the translation was made, and his Persian MS. which 

 supplied the text, must have been in England. f At any rate that the 

 MS. is the work of a Halhed may be taken for granted. I must con- 

 fess that this opinion is based on the suppositions, 1st, that the private 

 letters were addressed to the translator and his wife, and, 2nd, that the 

 syllable Hal and Halh on those letters are remnants of Halhed and 

 not of any other name beginning with the syllable Hal or Halh ; and 

 if a conjecture founded on such data be not admissible, I must leave 

 to others the task of tracing the author of our MS. which must for the 

 present remain a literary foundling. 

 The receipt of the following communications were announced — 



9. From W. Herschel, Esq. through Mr. A. Grote. 



" Description of a Hindu Temple converted into a mosque at Gage- 

 neshwar, zillah Midnapore." 



10. From W. T. Blanford, Esq. " Contributions to Indian Mala- 

 cology, No. 9." 



* I have lately had an. opportunity, through the kindness of Mr. Grote, 

 of examining, in the Record Room of the Board of Revenue, two minutes 

 by Mr. N. J. Halhed, bearing dates the 1st and 8th June 1827, respectively. 

 They are in the hand writing of a copyist ; but they contain the signature 

 of and many corrections both in pen and pencil by Mr. Halhed, and the style 

 in which they are written is quite different from that of our MS. 



f The date of some of the paper used in the MS. is in favor of this sup- 

 position. Some of the earlier sheets were written in June 1810, on paper 

 which had been manufactured in 1809, but which could not, in the olden days 

 of slow-sailing Indiamen, be available in India at that time, though it would 

 be easily accessible at the India House. 



