44 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Feb. 



When a nation already sufficiently organized and powerful to overrun 

 its neighbours, starts on a career of conquest, and, having as yet no 

 alphabet of its own, occupies countries where an alphabet is already 

 established, it was a priori improbable that it should take the trouble 

 of inventing one of its own. Of course, it did not follow, as Rajendra 

 Lai pointed out, that because the earlier Aryan hordes possessed no 

 alphabet of their own invention, that this was necessarily the case also 

 with later hordes, issuing from the same stock and the same " nidus," 

 but there was a strong antecedent improbability that a race which cer- 

 tainly at a comparatively late period of the world's history possessed 

 no alphabet, and was then surrounded by neighbours who did, neigh- 

 bours with whom, by conquest, some sort of intercourse must have 

 been established, — should nevertheless invent rather than adopt an 

 alphabet. Ceasing, however, to argue from pure probabilities, there 

 was, Mr. Bayley thought, some external evidence for concluding that 

 the Lath alphabet was not an Aryan invention, but adopted. 



It was not the only alphabet used by the Aryan race in India : at 

 the earliest date which could be assigned probably to any Lath 

 inscription, there was another character which Mr. Bayley would call 

 the Bactro-Pali, equally well established in Northern India, and em- 

 ployed to express what might be called identically the same language. 



In Northern India, including Cabul, it might be said that this 

 alphabet reigned supreme ; south of the Jumna on the other hand was 

 the region of the Lath character and its branches. Intermediately 

 between say the Jumna and the Jhelum was a tract of debateable ground, 

 in which however, at the early date above mentioned, the Bactro-Pali 

 certainly predominated on one inscription ; and many coins belonging 

 to this tract are however certainly bi-literal, expressing absolutely the 

 same words in both characters. 



If it be supposed that a later emigration of the Aryan race, leaving 

 its cradle after the invention of the Lath character, carried it with 

 them to Central and Southern India, one or other of the following 

 two several suppositions must necessarily be accepted; neither of 

 which seemed at all probable in itself or supported by any evidence. 



If, for example, it be supposed that the whole of the Indian Aryan 

 branch quitted its original resting-place together, then it must be 

 supposed that one portion abandoned its native alphabet and adopted 



