347 a Translation of a Hadrian Inscription. [No. 4, 
My reason for saying tliis is, that though one inscription is in the 
Arian and the other in the square Indian character, yet they both 
employ the same kind of cipher to express the date of the year, thus 
the figure which I take to express the cipher “ 1” is associated in 
the Wardak inscription with the figure which I understand as the 
cipher “ 3,” and in the Muttra inscription with those which I read 
as “ 4” and “ 7,” and the ciphers which I take to be “ 3” and “ 4” 
occur together on one of the Euzofzye inscriptions of Col. Cunning- 
ham. 
Expressed therefore in the same class of ciphers, it is to he pre- 
sumed that the date is to be read the same way, and if this is the 
case, the numbers are so widely differing that they cannot by any 
probability refer to the same asra. 
It is by no means necessary that they should do so, different teras 
certainly prevailed in different localities, and the localities of Wardak 
and Muttra are so far apart, that the presumption is decidedly against 
the aeras being identical. 
It is, however, just possible but not probable that the mode of 
reading the ciphers may have followed the reading of the letters 
with which they were associated. If so, the Wardak date might be 
read from right to left and the Muttra one from left to right. 
In such case I would render the Muttra date as 417 still, and 
the Wardak date as 331, and the date of the month on Sunahar 
as 14. 
In respect of the double “ 4” on the Eusofzye inscription in the 
place of the month to which Babu Eajendra Lai refers, I think it 
may possibly be explained by a practice which certainly obtains on 
the Muttra inscription of Huvishka, and one or two others found with 
it of writing in abstract the number of the month and number of the 
day of the month, as is customary in commercial and official corre- 
spondence of the present day, as for example for the 1st of January 
to write /l/l/, and the double four may consequently stand for the 
fourth day of the fourth month. 
But the subject is one full of difficulty, and I merely give the above 
remarks briefly to exemplify this, and to show why I cannot accept 
the version of the date which is given above by Babu liajendra 
Lai. 
