Letter on certain recent 
38 G 
[No. 4, 
The solecistie “ imperial purple” of Hindu rulers shall not detain 
me for a comment.* 
* At p. 149, supra , I have written as follows : “ My paper on the land-grants 
of Hastin, and that on the Eran inscriptions, as I did not see the proof-sheets, 
abound in errors of the press, to say nothing of other faults. The more im- 
portant will here be rectified, and a few comments interspersed.” As soon as 
I saw in print the second paper just mentioned, I amended, for my private eye, 
part of a sentence in the translations which it contains, in these words : 
4< Mafrivishnu, a most devout worshipper of JBhagavat; providentially preferred 
by Royal Prosperity, as it had been a maiden who elects her husband ; of lame 
diffused as far as the four oceans ; whose wealth of high-mindedness was never 
diminished ; victorious, in battle, over many an enemy,” &c. I could go on ; 
but the Babu will, from my own indications, already be fully satisfied, — if he 
gives himself to a close inspection of the above, — that he has entered the lists 
against fallibility. In that for which I have thus given a substitute, the Babu 
has tracked out a dissyllable that I at first overlooked, and has detected one other 
error of similar magnitude. So nice an Aristareh, especially when he enjoyed 
the advantage, which a neglect on the part of the printers gave him over me, 
ought to have reaped a richer harvest. Yerbum sat. He has seen, that, in two 
trifles, I w r as in the wrong ; but it would be easy to show, that, in trying to set 
me right, he has himself opened a door for criticism. 
One point more, — one not quite so minute. Mr. Prinsep, in his analysis of 
the Eran inscriptions, speaks of “ Tarapani” — rightly, Toramana, — as “ of 
Surastra (?),” and afterwards speaks of “ Budhagupta in Surastra.” All this 
I quoted in my “ Note on Budhagupta.” The Babu says of Toramana : “ Prin- 
sep threw out only a conjecture, when he called him a king of Saurastra” (sic) ; 
and he subjoins, in a note, “not, as has been supposed, by the misapprehension 
of a word in the inscription, which Mr. Hall (ante, p. 18.) has read sansurabhu .” 
The Babu must pardon me for declaring, that I never supposed any such thing. 
The word which I read sansurabhu occurs in an inscription where there is no 
mention of Toramana, but in one where there is mention of Budhagupta. As I 
have shown, Mr. Prinsep was uncertain as to the empire of the former, not as 
to that of the latter. His sansuratam he translates, erroneously, by “ beautiful 
country.” There is scarcely room for question, that in a moment of forgetful- 
ness, he thought it was in the Budhagupta inscription, and that he considered 
it to be equivalent to surashtra , beautiful kingdom, literally, and the name ot a 
realm. A home — covered up in sansuratam — thus found for Budhagupta, it was 
natural, I allow, to conjecture, that Toramana also, who came shortly after him, 
and was commemorated collocally with him, might have been of Surastra. On 
any other theory than this, Mr. Prinsep’s “Surastra” is inexplicable. 
But the Babu’s oversights about my Sansurabhu do not stop here. It was 
insufficient, it appears, for me to have written, that “what I read Sansurabhu is 
doubtful in its penultimate syllable, and very doubtful in its final.” Touching 
this reading of mine, the Babu says : “It would be a presumption, on our part, 
to question the reading of one who has the evidence of his own eyes to support 
it ; and yet we feel disposed to think, that Mr. Hall’s reading is the offspring of 
an illusion.” Eor the courtesy of this, I thank the Babu; but his inconsistency 
distresses me. Furthermore, it goes, with the Babu, for but little, I find, as 
contributing to induce credit in the trustworthiness of my version of the Eran 
inscriptions, that “ standing before the originals, I compared my facsimiles, letter 
by letter, with those that have been lithographed ; and every the slightest dis- 
similarity of the copies was patiently tested by the perishing archetypes.” The 
lithographed copies were those of Mr. Prinsep. 
The venerable Paniui is summoned to complete my annihilation. Sansurabhu , 
the Babu avers, is a word that flies in the lace of the aphorism •Jj sfpu 
■which imports, according to my critic, that inseparable prepositions “ should be 
used before verbal roots only.” Common sense should of itself suffice to explain 
