1861.] Of Two Land-grants, issued hij King Ilastin. 5 
The records under consideration are on thin plates of copper. The 
older set consists of two pieces, having, each, a superficies of about 
eight inches by five. In the other set are three plates, of which 
two measure seven and a half inches by five and a half ; while the 
third, only partially written over, is a little more than five inches 
long, and averages two in width. Near the top, the plates are 
perforated midway between the sides, for convenience of tying them 
together ; and each set is accompanied by an engraved ring. 
In the main, the paleography employed in these inscriptions is 
closely homogeneous with that which distinguishes the Allahabad 
monolith of Samudra Gupta. Their n alone is indubitably more 
recent. Strangely enough, however, two of their characters, s and k, 
everywhere occur of an earlier configuration ; and of gh and sh the 
older forms and those of Samudra Gupta both appear in them. Still 
these conclusions are not inevitable ; for there is nothing unreason- 
able in the supposition that, in some quarters of the country, by 
force of local influences, the constituents of the antique alphabet 
were not all modernized simultaneously. 
My annotatory observations on small matters will be found, it is 
anticipated, as circumstantial as the most microscopic critic could 
ask for. 
Not to go out of India, we have, it should seem, an example of an epoch 
denominated to memorialize the discomfiture of a hostile people. Agreeably to 
a scholiast of Varahamihira, this is the case with the familiar era of S' alca, ; and 
an expression used by Brahmagupta points to the sumo fact. See Colcbrooke’s 
Miscellaneous Essays, Yol. II., p. 475. 
