198 



Notices. 



[No. 32, 



mentioned as granted.-'' The plate then goes on, " and Mahommed 

 son of Mania has borne witness," Sec. I doubt whether 

 is the true reading of the fourth line. I am tempted to think that 

 ^^*oj alhurmdn or something like it, would be nearer to the 

 Cufic. At any rate AU Hazramat can be a correct translation of 

 neither. It must be " alhairamaf'' according to this deciphering 

 " Air is perhaps an error of the press. In the beginning of the 7th 

 line the proper name has not been made out. It seems to me to be 

 ^>i.A-=!\ or or the like ; i. e. ahanafi or alsaiji.. I see no 



reason to object to any thing else occurring in this inscription. The 

 Mahommedan histories of the times of this grant may possibly sup- 

 ply some information as to the persons here mentioned. I do not 

 however remember to have met with any such. 



Major RaivUnson on the Inteiinediate Signatures of the S//- 

 rian Plates. 



On the first publication of the fac similes of these plates, we trans- 

 mitted a copy of them to Major Rawlinson, who then stated his belief 

 that the final characters were a form of Pehlevi and promised a fur- 

 ther communication after he had made a more careful examination of 

 them. In his paper on the Behistun Inscriptions in the 10th Volume 

 of the Asiatic Society's Journal he describes the early cursive charac- 

 ter which he supposes to have been in use among the Persians ante- 

 cedent to the introduction or rather invention of the Cuneiform al- 

 phabet, and then continues in a note : '* In the names of the Parsi 

 witnesses attached to the copper sasanam, which is at present in pos- 

 session of the Syrian Christians of Malabar, we have probably an in- 

 teresting specimen of the Pehlevi character, as it was carried to In- 

 dia by the first emigrants of the Zoroastrian faith, when they fled 

 from the Arab army on its approach to Abilah, at the mouth of the 

 Euphrates, and sought refuge at Sindan, a town on the coast of 

 Guzerat, well known in Arab geography, but which, without this 

 direct testimony of Hamzah Isfahani, we should have some difficul- 

 ty in recognizing in the Saint John of the modern maps." 



The above singularly corroborates the following observation of 



* It must be borne in mind that the grant -svas conferred by the Hindu Sove- 

 reign of Malabar, and that the names following it Avere those of the subscribing 

 witnesses— Jewish, Arab and Persian Merchants of the same i)lacc. ^ 



