1861.] 
Translation of a Hadrian Inscription. 
341 
forbid their being written differently from left to right and right to 
left according to the genus of the characters with which they are 
associated. As long, therefore, as an inscription is not found in which 
the ciphers are given with their values in words, as in Dr. Burn’s 
Guzerat plates, it would be impossible to come to a correct deter- 
mination of the question at issue, and we must, consequently, leave the 
settlement of the date of our inscription for future research. The 
second and the third figures occur in Col. Cunningham’s Eusofzye 
inscriptions, and the first occurs in them as well as in the Muttra 
inscription. 
The first letter after the figures is an m, but the next is uncertain. 
Mr. Thomas takes it to be a ^ and Mr. Bayley a I or a ^). Appa- 
rently it is a compound letter, but a H supplies the meaning best : 
TPJ rnasa for niasa ‘ a month ;’ the substitution of a short for a 
long vowel and even the omission of vowel marks not being of much 
concern in Bactrian writing. May be the two letters masya stand 
as an abbreviation of m&sasya “ of the month.” The next word is 
aphtha according to Mr. T. and athva according to Mr. B. I feel 
disposed to take it for atha “ eight,” which with the chitriyasa after it, 
would mean “ on the 8th of the month of Chaitra.” The first letter 
of the last word, should, according to modern Sanskrit, be read chai 
for chaitra, the month in which, on the day of the full moon, the 
moon is in the constellation cliitra, but the non-prolongation of 
the vowel is not positively objectionable. In Col. Cunningham’s 
Eusofzye inscription the word is written chitrasa. The word atha 
being placed between mdsa and chaitra might mean “ the 8tli month 
chaitra,” but if the atha be joined in samasa with chaitra, the 
difficulty would be overcome. According to Mr. T. the chai should 
be read mi. 
The next two letters are very doubtful, Mr. B. reads them vreld 
and Mr. T. stehi ; neither of which supplies any meaning. In the 
position in which they appear in an oriental writing, they are expected 
to represent either the name of the day of the week, or the day of the 
moon’s age. I think they are the initial letters of Vrihaspati or Thurs- 
day ; although the vowel mark, not having been prolonged below the 
horizontal stroke of the v, looks more like e than i. This, however, is not 
of much consequence, as we occasionally see that the i is not prolonged. 
The ciphers which follow ought to represent the moon’s age. The first 
o 
x 
