328 



Translations. 



symbol and letters following in the inscription itself, even if read as 

 far as possible by the aid of his own alphabet • seeing that the vowel 

 marks which he gives in the alphabet, and those foi.nd in No. 1 are 

 quite different. — Throughout the book there is a withholding of the 

 vowel-points, which are necessa ry, in order to precision in any work, 

 not otherwise well known ; and throughout there is an apparent 

 recklessness as to any corresponding number of consonants : both 

 objections are fatal as to the correctness of the assumed translitera- 

 tion. 



Going back to a plate facing 215 is an inscription, which I take to 

 be mortuary, containing thirteen consonants each one bearing a vowel. 

 This piece Dr. Moore transliterates by twenty-four consonants, with 

 only two vowels. The last word in the inscription is, without doubt, 

 lay am, loss or death : a word which Mr. J. Prinsep read danam a 

 gift. Dr. Moore translates his own transliteration thus — " And his 

 passing away was as a lamentation, and my beauty and my grace 

 areas lamentation, O Judges !" If any one were disposed to forgive a 

 nearly doubling the number of consonants, and an elision of eleven 

 vowels, he must still feel that letters would not be cut on stone to 

 carry down to posterity, a sentence so very inane. 



In the rendering of the Girnar inscription, the phrase — "the mouth 

 of ruin hath pleaded their cause" — occurs twenty-two times. If 

 precisely the same letters recur so many times on the face of the rock 

 itself, surely it must have been intended to convey some meaning of 

 greater importance. When Job said, " Oh that my words were 

 graven with an iron pen, and lead in the rock for ever" — he gave a 

 sentence of great weight for the subject. Rock inscriptions can 

 scarcely repeat, over and over again, mere inanities. 



Dr. Moore has given the lengthy " inscription on Feroz's pillar in 

 English letters." It cannot be here quoted \ but referring any one, 

 in the least degree competent, to the book itself, I ask — do you call 

 that Hebrew ? For example, look at line 8. — Vidi samti gampta 

 pitrisu, su, su aja gulu susu su su aja my am. Again I ask, is that 

 Hebrew % 



Either Dr. Moore was imposed on by some one in his employ — as 

 more than one gentleman, in this country has been imposed on by 

 his Pundit or Moonshee — or else he has imposed on his readers a 



