1867.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 47 



So far therefore as the case stood before the Society— it seemed as if, 

 while there was a strong presumption, at least, that the " Lath" char- 

 acter was borrowed by the Aryans and not invented, it seemed at least 

 doubtful if it had a Dravidian origin, and its invention was still obscure. 



Mr. Bayley would, however, venture on a guess at a source,from which 

 there was some possibility perhaps that this character had been 

 derived ;but, in doing so, he did not venture either to put forth the 

 suggestion with any confidence, nor was it one to the authorship of 

 which he could lay claim. The subject had been touched upon both 

 by the late Sir Henry Elliot and by General Cunningham, and the 

 latter indeed had, he believed,- investigated it to some extent, and 

 might possibly give the result of his enquiries to the world. 



The great Sanscrit Epic spoke of a race of " Snakes" at enmity 

 with the Aryan race, and indeed allusions to them occur repeatedly 

 elsewhere both in the books and the traditions of the Hindus. Who 

 these Snakes might be, was not the present question ; it had been 

 attempted to identify them as Scythian, and for present purposes 

 Scythian was as good a name by which to indicate them, as any other. 



Now it was curious that the most Archaic form of the Lath 

 character (as had been pointed out by General Cunningham,) was found 

 on certain coins which bore the emblems and the names known to 

 have belonged to this Snake race.. Taking this hint, Mr. Bayley 

 would venture to throw out a few others,. The Snake race was not 

 confined to India alone : on the contrary, traces were found of it almost 

 everywhere in the Western part of Asia and in Eastern Europe. The 

 well-known story of Zohak had been supposed to indicate the conquest 

 ©f Persia, of " Iran" proper, by this Snake race or some wave of it. 

 The subject was a wide one and open to infinite inquiry and research. 

 But the points which were more immediately of interest related to 

 the presence of this race on the northern shores of the Euxine and 

 in the upper parts of Greece. Herodotus, it might be remembered, 

 spoke of the Cimmerians as displaced from mere pressure, on the upper 

 part of the Euxine,. by an irruption;: of Scyths, the offspring of Hercules 

 and a woman half a snake. Again the Nevpoi, a tribe allied to the 

 Scythian, were, a generation before Darius, similarly driven away 

 from their original site by Snakes, partly coming from the North, 

 partly bred among themselves \ and it was curious that Kadmus, the 



